


The Stains Beneath Our Skin

by sxxaint



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Dark, Delusions, Depression, Despair, Drama & Romance, Drug Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Gritty, Healing, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, Love/Hate, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Obsession, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Reincarnation, Romance, Self-Acceptance, Slow Burn, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love, in which Casper has a very bad mouth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 45
Words: 100,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxxaint/pseuds/sxxaint
Summary: Casper's a wreck. Rock bottom is his second home, but he's getting sick of the scenery. So if Cain, a charming and enigmatic stranger, is a little too captivated by him, he’s sure as hell not going to question it.Shame it’s just his luck to end up held captive while his perfect man claims to be his lover from a past life.But if the delusions spilling from Cain’s lips are as real as he believes, his obsession isn't the only thing that Casper should be afraid of. Running away is all he's ever done, but this time failing means death. Life sucks, but he's not about to give it up for a dream.
Relationships: Casper/Cain, OMC/OMC, Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 51
Kudos: 51





	1. Petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always felt there is something irresistible yet dangerous to those dreams of a fated meeting with 'the one'. This novel is a bit of a love note to that fantasy. It explores depression, self-worth, and that curious, insatiable desire to be loved. So, slip into this grungy, atmospheric world I’ve created and remember that, no matter how dark it may seem, there is always sunrise at the end of the night.
> 
> I've already completed this novel. Currently chapters are being updated Mondays & Fridays

The rain smelled different in the city.

Out in the country, the air plunged into such delicious freshness that some green-eyed linguist had coined a word for it: petrichor. Earth and growth and the wide, open sky and all the things that made life worth living. Nature rejuvenated on pattering droplets out of the gunmetal grey.

The kind of freshness Casper dreamed of every time he fell asleep.

Once, the sweetness had been a promise when Casper closed his eyes, but he couldn't seem to imagine it anymore. With every step between these metal hulks of industrial poverty and decaying grey-wash towers, the stink of human pollution swallowed a little more of the memory.

He’d run away here, once upon a time, and the city had been breathless with dreams. The untethered opportunity should have been the dawn of his damn life but all he'd found was one long waking nightmare and the swamp of apathy and oblivion suffocating everything inside him that hadn't already died.

At a pause on the corner, Casper pulled his phone out his pocket before striking out into the downpour again. Third time it’d swarmed against his thigh like a sack full of bees now, and he already knew who it was before he squinted at that scratched up screen through the raindrops that splattered across the glass. Jack, little heart tacked on the end that Casper had put there two years ago and never had the guts to change. Seemed like the stink should’ve gotten sweeter seeing his boyfriend’s name in the dull LCD.

It didn’t.

Sighing, Casper answered the call.

“Cassie baby!” Jack’s slur blared down the phone. Babbling voices haunted the background, and gritting his teeth, Casper knocked down the volume. Drunk. But at least it sounded like a good mood. “Hey, baby! Thought you were at work?”

Casper shouldered through the crowds. Screeching taxis and freight lorries flung pools full of sodden rubbish and muck at his legs as he jogged along the side of the road. The pouring rain had already soaked through his hood, wormed down the back of his coat to drench his skin and bones in shuddering, gasping ice.

Jack was probably too drunk to distinguish the noise.

“Fag break.”

“Hey, caught you just in time then, huh? Look—look, baby, do you— Hey, fuck off, cunt!” Jack’s voice faded even as it rose to a shout. “Yeah—Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, you fucking asshole. Watch where you’re fucking stepping, huh? I’ll cut your fuckin’ eyes out if you ain’t gonna fuckin’ use ‘em. Yeah, that’s right _fuck off._ Little fuckin’…” Wild laughter, and Jack’s voice came down the speaker again. “Sorry, baby. What was I saying?”

“Don’t ask me.”

Voices crackled down the phone and swarmed around him in a shapeless racket on this packed street, but where Jack’s should be, nothing but a pit opening up in his gut. Casper hissed between his teeth while he swapped hands on the phone, jamming the other in his pocket against the chill. _Here it goes, Cas. That’s what your bad mood buys you._

“Fuck’s up with you?” Jack’s voice had lost all levity. “You know what, Cas, you ain’t never pleased to hear from me anymore. Dunno why I fuckin’—"

“ _Jack_. Seriously _._ ”

Silence. Fuck knew that was Jack hanging on for an apology, but he wouldn’t get one. Casper was fucking sick of handing them out. Lies tasted foul as this pollution-clogged air on his tongue these days, but only the kind that helped someone else.

Another corner, squeezing around the bodies jammed up against the curb in their desperation to make space between them and the ragged figure huddled on the corner drenched by the rain. Usually, Casper stopped, offered the guy a cigarette – the least he could do was help out someone scratching out a breath of nicotine from a tin full of ends. Today, the rain came so thick and fast it drowned him, and the spark of Jack’s lighter still snapped down the phone.

The bar he worked at stood a grimy harbour in the darkness just across this side road, and with the rain pelting against his face, Casper bolted for it. Filth splashed up around his ankles as he sprinted across the street, down in his boots and between his toes. The alley he smoked in before work dipped down the side of the building, the mildewed awning of the smoking area the laughing void between him and a scratch of relief.

The regulars outside all waved to the dark shape of him huddling through the rain, shouting jokes and already slurring their words. Casper made himself grin and laugh, the phone pressed against his collar, and by the time he’d circled them, it almost felt genuine. Anyone passing by gave the gaggle of wheezing smokers and the spill of grunge tainting the street air a wide berth, but this was where he belonged, and hey, maybe he even kinda enjoyed it. Everyone had something, right? Casper kept drunks happy.

Was Jack still there? Casper had let the phone fall from his ear, but now he lifted it back, voices still ground down the speaker. Shit. It was always easier when Jack just hung up. Gritting his teeth, Casper slid into the side-alley, skipping over a spill of rubbish already smeared into the ground by the hammering rain. Maybe it stunk like month-old rot but compared to that clamour of pissheads out the front, it was quiet. God knew Casper needed quiet just about always with this headache that nailed into his skull like a disease.

“Jack, my break’s done. I’ve got to go.”

Jack’s voice burst down the speaker. “Nah, nah, nah – wait! Wait, wait—”

“Waiting.”

Tongue clenched between his teeth, Casper jammed open the backdoor and huddled in the arch. Spits of water still nipped at his cheeks, but it was sheltered enough to press the phone between his ear and his shoulder and roll a cigarette.

“Wanted to ask you, baby, you wanna come ‘round later?”

Shit. That’s what he got for bullshitting about the early shift. “I dunno, Jack. I’m wrecked.”

“So you don’t wanna?”

Casper straightened up, eyes narrowing at the cobweb crusted doorframe opposite him. Why wasn’t he pissed off?

“Only askin’ ‘cause if you ain’t gonna bother, there’s this _smokin’_ bird making eyes at—” Jack’s voice lifted abruptly out of his crooning drawl to an equally gut-tingling shout. “Yeah, honey, I see you lookin’!” Laughter. Casper pressed his eyes shut and grit his teeth. “Yeah, one second, babe, I’m just seein’ what my boyfriend’s sayin’, but he’s about to say no problem-o Jackie, so just gimme one sec, huh? Then I’ll get you—"

“ _Jack._ ”

Static distortion crackled through the speaker. Ice pick right into his goddamn brain, hammered home by that laughter. “Sorry, baby! What you sayin’ then? ‘Cause—”

“Yeah, Jack. Stick your fucking dick in her. I’ll be right here slinging drinks to smackheads where I always am. Don’t worry about me.”

“Sweet!” _Jesus fucking…_ “Catch you ‘round, huh, baby? Gonna leave you a little something for when you get home, alright?”

One last kiss smacked down the speaker and the line went dead.

Only the tobacco and paper grinding between his fingertips kept him from dashing the phone against the ground. An explosion of glass and wire against the unforgiving earth.

Wouldn’t it be beautiful?

Casper rolled another cigarette. He left his coat on the hook inside with the dream that the hypothermic downpour might make him feel alive.

It didn’t, because rain didn’t mean pretty sweetness and glistening emerald leaves in this place.

Rain meant grime and muck and ice sinking into your skin. It meant every scrap of colour that still sweetened your tongue stained black and mildewed grey. Rain meant another spit in the face of your memories of childhood innocence, back when the downpour had had you sitting at the window and marvelling at the wonder rather than crouched in an alley ripe with the putrid stink of rubbish in the middle of the night. Rain meant trying your damnedest to keep your cigarette dry and getting soaked yourself because that last scrap of tobacco meant far more than keeping the rain off your back.

At the last acrid toke, Casper tipped his head back to the heavens, scratching his fingers through his black hair to invite in the water pouring from the sky. Back to the murky grey abyss glowering between the drunken buildings. Fat droplets splashed across his face, frostbitten gasps of cold greasy with pollution. He shivered as the water slithered down his throat, soaking the last dry scraps of his hair and plastering his t-shirt to the skeletal frame of his ribs. The strange geometric pattern adorning the front winked its illuminati eye at the sky.

Was this what the wonder used to be? Water clogged his nose and if he kept his mouth shut, it was just like drowning.

But drowning didn’t buy him more tobacco.

Inside, the muggy heat settled like a pillow across his face. Suffocating. The bass wormed through his brain, throbbing through the floor and shuddering in his bones. Water drizzled off his clothes, pattering against the concrete, and Casper turned his head up to the fluorescent bar of light flickering on the ceiling, a thin smile on his chapped lips. Drizzle from the grey cloud that had hung low above his head as long as he could remember.

His whisper cracked in his throat, the sound lost beneath the music crawling under his skin. “I want to run away.”

Run away from the place he’d run toward. That really was just like him, but now he drowned like a cockroach caught in a sewer flow, so how could he cling to this nightmare?

Maybe one day he'd sit beneath a porch in the countryside, and the droplets pattering on the awning while he smoked would be the only sound in the world. Green hills would roll right up to the horizon and the air would lay fresh with petrichor on his tongue.

Maybe one day he'd make it before this place killed him.

Casper sighed and started off down the corridor to the bar, his fingers trailing along the black roller-painted walls.

His phone buzzed just as he set his hand on the doorknob through to the back room. Casper grinned. Message from the gods that was. Ease your headache for one moment longer, mortal. Who was he to ignore the thread of fate? Nothing but a stain on the corner of the great tapestry of the world. A fly buzzing around a room with no windows and no doors. Round and round and round and round until his heart gave out and he dropped dead.

Casper unlocked his phone as he edged away from the door a little way. There was his little something. The screen held a string of texts from Jack – the usual cute stuff all rife with drunken misspellings. Then the photos: fingers wound through his bleached fauxhawk, all the sublime cut bulk of him bathed in creamy light as he posed in front of the mirror in the club bathroom.

Heat welled in Casper's chest, overflowing to slide down through his gut to pool in his groin as he scrolled through them. Casper leant back against the wall as the icing splurged out onto the cake. Thirty seconds of pornographic filth and Jack's rough drawl like he had his hand around Casper's throat and his teeth sinking into his skin.

Hey, it wasn't love, but it was as close as he'd ever get.

The bass thudded against Casper’s back in time with the throb of blood in the hardness trapped inside his tight jeans. He knocked his head against the wall, eyes sliding up and down the empty hall. Would it really harm...? Nona and Jess were supposed to stay behind the bar until he got there, and _technically_ , he had like ten minutes...

Oh, had he undone his jeans? Not him, but a phantasmal Jack with a wolfish smile and one hand pinning Casper's wrists to the wall. Naked, hands chained to the ceiling now while Jack circled him, knife trailing over his skin while he—

Someone was there.

Fleeing bugs skittered down his spine. _Would it harm? Fuck sake, Casper. You're a mess._ Gritting his teeth, he peeked down the hall.

Nona stood by the door at the end, and hey, that's what he got for expecting she'd work like she was supposed to ‘til the end of her shift. So easy to slack off, wasn't it, when this job wasn't the rest of your life.

Her phone was out, and her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the laughter. She had the kind of face Casper forgot whenever it left his sight, and here was her self-worth: a viral video of her gutterrat co-worker jacking off in the back corridor, the sleazebag curled around his small, wank-raw dick with drool sliding over his lips.

Her laughter screamed out as he met her eye. Her little step back said preparing to film the onslaught. _Oh_ , and how cruel not to give her the pleasure.

Casper smiled and tipped his head back against the wall. The ugly smile. The one that twisted his scars in his cheek and crawled down your spine like cockroaches. Nona's face fell as he kept a grip on his deflating cock. All the blood had better places to be now, a mark of shame across his face.

_What are you doing, Casper?_

His voice scraped up his throat. "It's extra for a video, love."

Her lip curled. The hand wrapped around her phone shook. It only took five seconds of Casper stroking himself while holding eye contact for her voyeurism to confront her. The kind of thing people like her answered in themselves with projected disgust. _Like I'd have to do it if she just screamed at me like a normal human being._ She clucked her tongue against her teeth and put her phone away.

"You're disgusting."

Like he was the one with a video of her masturbating. "You owe me twenty dollars."

The repulsion on her face doubled down and she fled past him. Her blonde hair flittered through the door. Groaning, Casper banged his head against the wall.

There went his job.

Why did he _do_ that?

He hurried to the bar anyway. No matter that he passed out every morning with the sliver of hope that maybe he wouldn't wake up that evening for this pit of a life. Call him a lot of things, none of them good, but he'd do his goddamn job until the boss fired him and he’d do it well.

The music pounded into his skull. Bass so filthy it strung out into a slur of gut-twisting reverberation. A small room preceded the bar, boxes and fridges and Nona sat on a stack of crates, a brief glare up from her phone just to stick him with daggers bearing little messages to tell him you're disgusting.

Casper reminded her she owed him money before he left.

Into the pit.

The rush drowned his thoughts for the rest of the night. If there was one thing to be said for bartending, nothing kept the bugs in your skull at bay better than fending off the thirsty masses. Not half a second's break to think; Jess poured drinks with a desultory doped-up hesitance, but Casper threw himself into the whirlwind with relish. When the crowd broke about five, it was like surfacing from a murky pond with gasping breaths that felt like being reborn.

For the first time since he'd come back from his smoke break, no one stood at the bar when he turned around. The music didn't bang so loud, eased down to a conversational volume. Patrons slumped over the dim tables, a low buzz of conversation in the air and the glow of embers crowning cigarettes and joints alike.

Some distant cousin of adrenaline trembled beneath his skin, sweat thick through his hair and sticking his still-damp t-shirt to his back. Jess stood vacant, her eyelids drooping in slow blinks. Nona had long gone – the boss liked her too much to give her the late shifts.

Casper tapped Jess on the elbow and told her to go, to watch out for herself and to make sure she carried the pepper spray in her hand when she walked home.

“Text me when you’re back,” he said, “okay?”

Something like a smile crossed her lips. “You’re gonna be the one to need the pepper spray, sweetie. All the bad guys are already in here.” It was the first joke she'd made in two weeks, so Casper smiled against the scream that clawed up his throat.

Jess gone, it was just him, the smackheads, and the booze.

The whiskey bottle coughed up a triple into a murky glass and he tipped it down his throat. Casper lifted the bottle to the light and snorted. Watered. Barely even that cheap alcohol burn. Why did it even surprise him anymore? But another double, and a tingling warmth touched his fingertips anyway, and fumes off the petrol-heat in his stomach. Sighing, he rested his elbows on the bar.

Then Casper saw him, and he couldn't quite believe he'd managed to miss him the whole night.


	2. Whiskey

Casper didn’t know what it was about expensive clothes that made them look expensive, but no matter that all he wore was black slacks and a loose white shirt, the scent of money just _rolled_ off them. Perhaps it was the way the watch on his wrist hung real-gold heavy and posed like a work of art all at once. Perhaps it was just the way he wore them – even leant against the end of the bar nursing some of that watered-down whiskey, his posture was a billion dollars. Straight back, easy hips, loose shoulders.

The alcohol warmth lifted into his chest and spilt over into his groin.

Absolutely fucking gorgeous.

A crooked smile touched his lips, one that failed entirely to hide that something breathless in his eyes as Casper met his gaze.

The man lifted his glass to Casper and tipped the last down his throat. Even though the music slid too loud in the air between them, the clack that went with that precise placement of the glass on the bar came clear as if it weren’t there.

Casper went over like a well-trained dog, the empty glass his owner waggling a treat at him, and picked up the whiskey as he went. Could be anything brown, but he looked like the kind of man who drank century-old single malt in a wood-panelled study, not rum. No one who looked like that had any right making Casper's mouth this dry. No one who looked like that had any right leaning against his seedy bar making eyes at him.

His hand settled over the glass before Casper could pour him another out, long, slender fingers curling over one by one with the elegance of spider legs. A fall of glossy dark hair caught the low light as he tilted his head, that same sly, crooked smile on his lips.

He had a voice just like as the rest of him. Like black-gold sin.

“I don’t suppose you have anything less ... _watery_?”

Of course they didn’t have anything less _watery._ If he’d been looking for something less _watery,_ he should have gone _anywhere_ in the city but here or any other bar Casper had ever worked in. Men like him didn’t belong here. Men like him came here to pick up a hooker that they’d leave bloody on the side of the road when they were done with a clip of fifties like it’d wash away the memory of his wire coat hanger worming under her skin.

It didn’t. Jess would tell you that.

Casper rested his elbow on the bar and curled his lip. Just the way that lifted the scars slicing through his cheek to the light. “Bring your own bottle and I’ll pour it for you for a tenner. I’ll even lean in and pull my top down – really make it worth your while.”

Laughter hadn’t been what he’d been going for. Especially not the kind of laughter that made this man smile like that. His hand flew from his glass to shield his mouth and his eyes danced. How long had it been since he’d seen someone that happy? No one in this place, that was for sure. No one outside either. Maybe not even Jack.

The stranger leant in, hand cradling his jaw and his head tipping further sideways. Still smiling. Perhaps it was the booze tinting his cheeks pink. “If I unbutton my shirt too, can we call it five?”

_For fuck’s sake…_ Rolling his eyes, Casper grabbed the bottle off the side, the neck warm under his hand. A smile twitched his lips. “You want one or are you leaving?”

“Are those the only two options?”

“I’m sure one of the girls in the back are free.”

“And I’m sure they’ll change their mind when I can no longer change mine. Very well—” the man pushed his glass toward Casper, smiling— “make it something with a bit more kick this time.”

Casper snorted and turned around. “What, do you want me to piss in it?” Tens of bottles of the same budget-brand spirits lined the wall, all of them already cracked. The liquids gleamed dull cream, a dying sun caught in the murky depths of each little universe. Nothing with a kick bar that vodka, so he plucked that back off the splintering shelf.

That cultured murmur sounded as soon as he turned around, the same note of humour lifting the edges. “How much does that cost?”

“Fifty if you want me to watch you drink it.”

The man laughed, still with the same exultant smile on his lips. Really, this guy was a fucking fool. Something other than alcohol had to be tainting his veins for him to come here and _flirt_ with Casper. In this muck, he shone. Call it cliché, but against all these degenerates and the dirt, his energy just _glowed._ For one, no one came here to fucking glow, and for two, Casper was as much a cockroach in this shithole as the rest of them. Ruined surly face, black clothes, rain-ratted hair already cut like shit. Like he ever tried to be anything different.

But those bright eyes were too clear on him for his mind to be addled, nothing but a whiskey-kick in that half-glazed grin.

Casper shook his head and tugged the cup toward him to pour out a glass. Another for himself followed, a generous helping. Maybe enough to make this flirting seem like a good idea. Barely enough swilled about the bottom of the bottle to make it worth putting back on the shelf, so Casper topped both the glasses up with the last and binned it.

“And how much is that?” the man asked. He pulled both glasses toward him with two fingers, some blue steel pout on his sinfully perfect lips. “Considering I’ve had nowhere near enough to miss you nabbing that one.”

As if Casper was stupid enough to try that with a guy who looked as if he could fund his jailtime out of pocket. A flick of his fingers chinked off one glass. “Two-fifty for that one. And this one—” Casper pulled free the other glass— “is a thank you for running my entire fucking bar from my boss.”

His eyes didn’t leave Casper as he reached into his pocket, a careful kind of consideration in that gaze. The ten he slid across the bar was crisp, straight off the press and into this yuppie’s pocket. He trapped the end with his finger as Casper grabbed it and spoke before that scratch of irritation could take hold.

“How much for you to tell me your name?”

And the way he trapped Casper’s gaze on his… Fingers still pinched around the end of the bill, Casper took a long drink from the glass. The burn didn’t make it hit less intimate. Eyes like that question was murmured with them both naked beneath satin sheets, his hair tickling Casper’s cheek as he whispered, breath sultry warm against his throat.

_Keep it easy, Casper. You can fuck Jack when your shift ends._ No matter that Jack would be long passed out, maybe not even in his own bed.

How much for his name?

“Seven-fifty,” Casper said. Shit awful hard to keep the breathy out of his voice.

Not even a flinch. Nothing but that bedroom voice and that bedroom smile. “How much for you to let me tell you mine?”

Was he actually serious? The corners of Casper’s lips twitched and he tapped his finger against the bill. “Double it.”

Somehow that bastard just kept on smiling. He released the bill and with a grin, slipped another out of his pocket. One more crisp ten. “Keep the change.”

There was the irritation. Tight coiled in the front of his skull. Casper slapped the note back on the counter and grabbed the prick’s drink from his loose fingers. The fall in his face might have been comical if Casper hadn’t been enjoying the smile so damn much just a moment ago.

“Casper.” He bit out the words, tightening the scratch of his voice down to a growl. “Free. You can fuck off with your—”

“ _Casper_ —” The man straightened, hands held up in the air with the white flag of surrender flying in the way his eyebrows drew together like some kicked puppy. The way he said his name sounded like a well-worn trail. “No, I’m sorry, I’m an absolute idiot at this. I really just wanted to buy you a few drinks. I _truly_ am sorry if I insulted you.”

The music slid into a softer song, something to sway to at the end of the night, and the buzz of conversation infiltrated his ears again. For a moment it had been quiet. For a moment, it hadn’t stunk of piss and booze and old smoke while he tumbled into that zen trance, but now he’d plummeted out the other side of that mist in a cloud of hallucinogenic fractals. The bleak reality of his clothes stuck to his skin and this rich cunt who at best wanted to pay him for sex and at worst wanted to throw his money around to make himself feel big. Casper slammed both the glasses back on the counter, the liquid raising a chill on his fingers as it sloshed over, and stalked away.

A pair of regulars, one with a sharp red mohawk, waited somewhere around the middle for drinks. Any other night and he’d trade the same old lines while he took his time over it. Any other night it wouldn’t be so damn hard to keep his eyes off the cunt at the end of the bar. For a long time, he just stood there, head in his hands, and his fingers working against his scalp. Right up until Casper had slapped together the four drinks and taken Redhawk’s money. The stranger's throat bobbed as he tipped back both vodkas and then he was gone, a spectre in the hazy darkness of the club. Two notes lay crisp on the bar, a window of pale hope against the dark grime behind them. A window just like the sky between the tower blocks on a clear day – nothing but a dream.

Redhawk hung back while Casper pocketed the notes, something uncomfortably tight in his chest. He brushed his fingers over Casper’s jaw and slid eighty in crumpled fives and tens over.

It took the rest of his shift and the time until Redhawk had him up against the wall in the back alley with his dick in his ass to realise the feeling was regret. But he kept moaning anyway, and maybe it felt all the better knowing he deserved it more.

Knowing that Keef would still be out and release waited at home for him like the sweetest lover laid out on the sofa with brown powder spilling from between her legs.


	3. Chinese

By the end of next week, it seemed as if rejecting that bright-eyed stranger at the bar had brought some kind of cosmic karma down on him.

Shit on the concept of good getting good and bad getting fucked in the end, because if things actually went down like that then maybe Casper would still be getting fucked over but at least the rest of the world would have some kind of right to it instead of this horror-show of cancer-kids and hit-and-run rich boys getting scholarships to college. But maybe those three sisters weaving threads through the roots of Yggdrasil had something planned for him down that road. Maybe an imminent death from the city’s newest serial killer, but it was a plan nonetheless and they’d gotten petty about him slipping his fate.

After Redhawk finished fucking him, he’d picked up off Keef. Took the dope free in the end for a blowjob, which was _exactly_ why all his dealers were women or at least a little gay. Not so bad on that front, but he’d stepped through his shitty, broken front door to find Jack waiting for him on the sofa. Coked to his eyeballs, horny, and got his face right up in Casper’s ass before he jerked back with betrayal crushing through his gorgeous face.

“Nah, fuck this, Cas,” he’d said before he left. Once he’d finished shouting for about quarter of an hour while Casper sat on the sofa with his head in his hands. “I fuckin’ told you, baby. No more. Hope them fuckin’ tricks keep you warm at night.”

They didn’t. Only a cold hollow that once more expanded through the fleshy padding of normality he’d wrapped around himself and swallowed him whole.

His boss rung him about an hour later, and Casper had answered high as a kite. Chewed him out in that disappointed father way that might have made his skin crawl if he hadn’t been so far gone, and told him he was on _probationary suspension._

“You’re a good kid, Casper. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t excuse this behaviour. Find your money some other way for a couple of weeks, kid, and don’t find it bartending or you can stay there. Come back the Saturday after next.”

Two weeks. Rent was due in one and Casper had already been running short.

So he’d been a sleepy boy again. Like he’d ever known anything else. Reactivating the old accounts had made him sick. Actually sprint to the toilet sick as soon as he saw those soft lit photos of his scarred body, ass out, dick hanging loose while he bit his lip and wound his fingers through his hair. Username _roachboy; Little sub bitch with a tight ass looking to give you a good time. Toned, tight, flexible. Cute uncut dick. Cute face (if u can take it). Cute ass. Cute kid. Need a dom to put me in my place. Up for anything, use me however you want. Passing trap and faketeen. Use me for ageplay, extra rough sex, gangbangs, dp, and all your other fantasies. Hmu and you’ll never want another toyboy again. 100 per hr, overnight 350._

The first call came after two hours, and Casper had an overnight booking lined up on his way over. The hour was over fifty and his beer gut spilt over his tiny dick. Casper went in makeup, a wig, and a skirt, and he came so quickly he had to give the old fuck ten minutes free.

After all, he deserved this.

And it all took him plummeting downhill so fast the bottom was lightyears gone. Maybe he took in money, but his drug use went through the roof. A lot of them liked him high or drunk. It made them feel better about how badly they used him. Sure, he said only did safe sex, but if someone offered him four hundred for an hour without, he was never going to turn it down. That week he slept about twelve hours combined and ate one meal a day.

Sunday, he gave himself a day off. His hands shook too badly to rack a line or pour a drink and that had always been his timeout marker. Shitty day off really. He wanted to draw, but hands shook too much, and he wanted to read but his mind didn’t work right and he held the book in front of his face for half an hour reading the same couple of pages over and over because he kept forgetting what happened. Coding wasn’t even worth considering and it seemed too much like work anyway. He hadn’t touched it for months because it was too much like a life he’d never have.

So he spent the day in a zombie-like fugue, half asleep on the sofa beneath a blanket while he played all his comfort films and wondered why he couldn’t cry. Would it make him feel better, sobbing into his toy lion and letting out all this pain gnarled up inside his mind? Ease out the tangle of thorns on the salty tear-slick?

It didn’t matter.

The night hung like a haze around the streets when Casper went out for food. The sky was supposed to be black at night, like velvet, but here it reached only a murky amber too much like rainclouds. The line he’d had earlier had worn off and his stomach had actually growled. Strange how positive it felt actually laying all those notes out on the table and budgeting them off for food and bills and rent and even some savings (and dope) and then his little stack of _treat yourself, roach boy_ – a hundred to spend how he liked. So Casper had taken a ten off the top and headed out to the Chinese. Not the cheap, food poisoning in soy sauce one he usually went to and not the one Jack used to take him to. The nice one on a nice street where the shops all looked welcoming and there wasn’t a single gang of tracksuited dealers in sight.

The city still smelt like petrol and rotting food, and claustrophobia still crawled down his spine, but it felt like life a step above grimy, monotonous purgatory.

Few people walked the long avenue, all of them passing easy beneath the bare trees. Soft amber light from old-style wrought-iron streetlights bathed the pavements and the shop fronts slid gently backlit and tasteful behind them. Casper’s Chinese was about halfway down, the name _Fortune Wok_ scrawled in cursive gold across a blue background peeking between the netting of branches. His heart seemed to beat slower here than it had in months, gentle and rhythmic, not a stutter away from heart failure like usual. Ice nipped at his cheeks, like a splash of cold water over his face startling him awake. Just a glimpse of nature, evergreen bushes circling the trees behind those little square fences, made his mind slow and his breath come easier.

Maybe he should get a houseplant. Some huge green-leafed monstrosity. Maybe he should get about ten – nothing better to spend that spare money on really than turning his flat into a hothouse jungle.

A slim, tall figure in black slacks and a white shirt stood outside the Chinese, amber-tinted smoke from the tip of his cigarette and the part of his lips floating to the soft-lit heavens before him and the green neon strip from the shop next-door bathing half of him the shade of sunlight filtering through forest leaves.

At first, Casper only looked twice because of the weather. Cold enough to have him in about four layers and still shivering. Everything else made him keep looking.

The man from the bar.

Casper stopped a few shops down. So much for that slow heartbeat. With his head tilted back like that, the artificial light casting his jawline into sharp relief, there was no chance he’d seen him. Was the cunt following him? Had he picked up one of those stalker types? Like _that_ had gone well the first time. Jack had been a technicality away from prison for the rest of his natural life, because no one else in the system or the entire world gave a damn that Casper couldn’t leave his flat without getting that spine-chilling mixture of death threats, confessions of love, and eyes on him from the other side of the street.

That was half the reason why Jack said no more to the tricks. The other half was that it made him feel sick that Casper was just like the girls he paid to abuse.

Shit. Casper rubbed his hands over his face and shook the thoughts of Jack free of his head. Fuck him. Fuck that he couldn’t see that Casper spent every day treading water a second from drowning.

This guy wasn’t following him. Casper hadn’t even known he was coming here until he already left, and there he was, already here anyway. Call it chance, probably. No point not finding out, and like fuck would Casper be chased away from his one fucking paper lantern in the darkness.

And he’d pretend it was that. Not the way he kept finding himself wondering how anyone had been able to smile at him like that.

Definitely not that.

Casper straightened up and walked over to the Chinese. His legs trembled the whole way there.

The man did a good job of pretending he wasn’t waiting for Casper to show up if he was. His head stayed tipped back (and _god,_ that jawline made lust worth every second in hellfire), eyes trailing across the starless sky overhead. Casper walked quiet, and the man jumped when he spoke.

Not following him then. Probably. Casper didn’t answer straight away. His fingers kept themselves occupied prodding tobacco into his paper and rolling the cigarette, and his mind kept itself occupied studying that idiotically doe-eyed expression on the stranger’s face. It didn’t falter once, even though Casper was _certain_ he didn’t look as if he were looking. In fact, he just stared, beatific, the whole time, pretty lips wrapped around the filter of his cigarette. What was this guy’s fucking issue? What a weirdo.

Lips tight, Casper stuck the cigarette in the fold of his beanie and turned to go into the shop. He spoke his reply to the window. “No.”

In the reflection of the door, he caught a flash of white in the man’s grin. “Are you sure _you’re_ not following _me_?”

The heat of the shop engulfed him, and Casper let the door slam behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casper ain't giving in that easily, no matter how this guy looks at him.
> 
> Thanks for reading so far! Drop me a kudos if you like it, and better yet, bookmark for updates!


	4. Surrender to Instinct

Inside the Chinese was warm and clean and it smelt like five spice and soy sauce. Real dream come true, that. Casper could bathe in soy sauce all day long and sniff himself all night. His shoes clicked against the tiles and the lucky cat on the counter waved hello. Yeah, it was nice here. Sort of place he’d come all the time if he had as much money as rich boy outside.

Really ruined the atmosphere when the old Chinese lady at the till got really shifty with him and asked if he knew ‘tall sir outside’.

Casper scowled at her. “No. I just want some food.”

But she just huffed, hands flying up in the air as her brows got tighter. “You talk to tall sir outside. You friend?”

“No, I’ve literally met him twice. Can I get some food?”

“ _No,_ but you talk to tall sir, yes?”

 _Fuck_ this man was giving him so many fucking obstructions to his monotonic trudging apathy it was unreal. Casper rubbed his hand over his scarred cheek and sighed. The heat had started to trap and itch beneath his collars, trapped against his throat. “ _Yes,_ I talked to him. I just want some vegetable udon noodles and the vegetarian spring rolls. _Please._ ”

With a sage nod, the woman _finally_ tapped his order into her register. It came up four dollars forty no matter that Casper was staring at the menu and putting two and two together to make eight.

“That’s not right,” he told her. Like a total idiot.

“Four dollar forty,” she told him right back.

Like he was going to argue over a half price meal twice.

Then for some stupid reason, Casper went back outside. Dickhead was still there. _Obviously._ The door opening startled him from his smog-gazing and that same stupid grin brightened his face.

“It’s far too warm in there, isn’t it?”

Casper raised his eyebrow and as soon as he did, the man’s fingers trapped the bridge of his nose and his eyes rolled skyward, his lips moving around some inaudible muttering.

Like seriously, had he been this endearing before? It was unbearable. _Scepticism, Roach. He’s just another rich boy with bad intentions._ Like Casper didn’t have a hard-on for guys with bad intentions.

The shop window didn’t creak and bow as he put his back to it, unlike his old Chinese. All those bare branches sketched motionless through the air, the tips trembling as they reached for the touch of their neighbours and fell achingly short. Everyone who walked past looked at him. People usually did and it made his skin crawl, but the trees were almost like a veil between him and the world. Few enough frequented the street this late on a Sunday as it was. All the more a strange coincidence meeting him here.

At the flare of his lighter, the cigarette smoke flooded his mouth and nose and lungs. A dry drowning. He pulled deeper and closed his eyes, trapping the smoke down in his lungs with his lips pressed tight together. Too easily, his head whirled, floating up to heaven as an offering to the stars in place of the smoke. His stomach growled its reminder. His legs trembled. One by one, the nerves in his body woke up until the whole intricate web _screamed_ out a plea to breathe. Casper denied it until with a final, petulant wail, his body asserted its will and let the smoke go. Survival, lighting up his nerves.

Surrender to instinct.

“What’s your name?”

The man’s eyes flew back down to him, the light from inside flashing across the brown. “What?”

Casper’s lips twitched. “You seemed a lot more together last time we talked.”

“Oh, I—” His tongue stalled, and he rubbed at the bridge of his nose again, the smile making its inevitable return to his lips. “That wasn’t what you said.”

“No.”

“Well, what was it?”

That probably deserved something sarcastic, but Casper just put his head back against the window and croaked through his lungful of smoke, hooded eyes on that fragile, expectant look on his face. “Your name.” Why did his voice have to sound like this? This creak like a rusted hinge. Tight smoke throat or no, he always sounded like he was mid-drag. Hideous. “What’s your name?”

“Oh…” The man turned a little, wide eyes. Pink dusted light across his cheeks and his smile came slow, timeless. His cigarette had burnt down to the filter and gone out, but he still had it pinched between his fingers like he’d forgotten it. “Cain. It’s—It’s Cain Smith.”

“Cain...” It rolled off his tongue like an old friend, and the man – Cain... Well, Jack had never looked so pleased to hear his name on Casper tongue. No one had. A sinkpit dug out the bottom of his stomach and Casper put his hand to it as he turned his eyes away. No one should.

What did he see when he looked at Casper? And how could _any_ variation of it invoke a smile like that?

Why was he putting so much effort into faking it?

With his eyes turned away, he caught the cashier bustle out of the back, a small plastic bag in hand. Undoubtedly, her squinting through the window meant it was Cain's and Casper jumped on it.

“Your food’s done.”

“My... Oh—” A silverleaf rustle of cloth. Shit, they even sounded expensive. Not even dress up this time, but the clothes he wore to the Chinese. The cashier’s eyes flicked up above Casper, and she bowed, hands together, deep over the counter and beckoned him inside. “Yes, I suppose it is...”

That trail off sounded as if he expected Casper to say something. A blessing, maybe, anointed on him like the fortune bestowed by that plastic cat's bobbing paw. When nothing came, a deep sigh filled the quiet and he brushed past Casper to go inside.

Casper put his back to the glass and pressed his hand to his mouth.

What was this?

A dream, that’s what it was. A frame from a movie soaked in dreams.

That sinkpit had grown monstrous, feeding off his guts and filling his insides with its swirling, black maw. A black hole gnawing away at the core of him, and his chest ached as if the hunger dragged in his heart and his lungs too. A strain against inevitable death, and his breath gasped against the greed.

That’s all this was. It was greedy. Gluttonous, a parasite that fed off the coy guile making this man look at him as if he were something other than scum.

Roach boy. _Little sub bitch looking to give you a good time._ Oh and he would, just for two seconds of the heady butterflies that smile lifted in his gut.

Casper dragged his sleeve over his eyes. They burned and it felt as if tears should smear across his face, but there was nothing there. Nothing but the throb of the fading bruise across his cheekbone. Tremors wracked his hand as he lifted the cigarette to his lips, but that flood of nicotine did nothing to calm _shit._

The door opened, and the stranger – Cain – stepped out with a white plastic bag dangling from his fingers. The glow of the streetlight drifted across his face and illuminated the smile that bloomed as he looked down at Casper. Hesitant, now. A little cramped at the edges, and his eyes touched tragic as they trailed over his face.

Casper’s jaw tightened and he looked away. Gone and ruined it already.

Just beside him, there was a sigh and then the rustle of the plastic bag. “I think she gave me yours too. Here—” More rustling— “you can keep the bag.”

Fuck, it was just like the universe was slapping him around the face telling him to give into this little snatch of false care. _Go ruin it completely, Roach Boy. Make his lip curl with disgust when he looks at you._ If this really was innocence, it’d be so sweet to drink.

Jack never looked happy to see him anymore. Casper had fucked them up too many times.

“Look—” _Way_ to aggressive, and Cain flinched as Casper turned to him, two containers balanced in his hand. Shit. Casper banged his head back against the window, a dull thud going through his skull, and squeezed his eyes closed. He pitched his voice lower, closer to the soft Hades rasp. “I—Like, are you—do you want to eat those together? If you’re not busy that is. I mean you’ve probably got like a million—”

“I’d love to. I … I’d absolutely love to.”

Casper’s eyes flew open, and the smile on Cain’s face knocked every particle of air out of his chest, a soft, fuzzy warmth lifting in its place. Like Casper had just asked him to _marry_ him or something, not eat a fucking Chinese together. God, this idiot was so bloody _soft._ His eyes shone in the muted light and all the gentle sounds of the street cradled the flutter of his heart in his ears.

Why couldn’t life be like this? Sweet, gentle, unhurried. Not this grimy scrabble for survival that tore him apart. Half his skin spattered like sodden leaves on the floor, but still they kept peeling it away. His throat had burned so raw he couldn’t even scream anymore.

It’d been a long time since he could.

Casper rubbed his hands over his face, and the heels met the fading relic of a smile. Shit. This was already going to hurt when it went sour, and it was perfect. It was exactly what he deserved.

“My place is just a couple of blocks away. Do you want to…?”

A sharp jolt broke through the warmth. Had to be twenty different front doors he’d walked through this week, and that wasn’t even counting the motel rooms. Of those, he could count on one hand how many he’d felt safe in. He couldn’t do another one tonight.

“No.” Cain’s smile dropped and Casper didn’t even have to fake the heart-lurching stutter. “No, I mean … we—we can do mine, if you like. I mean actually it’s fucking _grim_ , but if you give me like two secs to—”

“There’s a park near here,” Cain cut in, pointing in the direction of Casper’s and the opposite to where he’d indicated his. “It’s a bit dark but there’s a bench there with a spectacular view.”

Spectacular. Did he _actually_ say spectacular? A smile twitched at Casper’s lips and shaking his head, he straightened up. “So you’re asking me to come somewhere dark where no one’s going to hear me screaming?”

“No! I—” Cain’s eyes flew wide. Idiot even threw his hands up and had to juggle his Chinese containers to stop them flying off. “ _Cock._ I just meant—"

His voice died when Casper started laughing, some exasperated roll of his eyes to go with that fond smile that flooded onto his lips.

And just like that it was real. This stupid perfect guy wasn’t just looking. He was walking, talking to _Casper._ Sober. Like not quite in the light but close enough because light really didn’t do Casper any justice at all. Soft streetlights cast Cain’s face with topaz warmth and that stupid freakin’ sappy smile sent Casper’s head whirling up to the grungy sky as they started off down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy doesn't have time for guys like Cain ... at least until he does. Casper always has been and always will be a romantic at heart (now i wonder where i got that trait from...)


	5. Spectacular

A rare lull had descended on this street, and other than a middle-aged couple dawdling arm-in-arm down the other side of the road, not another soul disturbed the gentle quiet. The streetlamps cast pooling amber light across the precise shapes of the tiles and as they passed into a shadowed interlude, Casper slipped his hand around his waistband. His fingers met chill metal, a switchblade in a pocket sewn into the inside of his waistband, and some tension ebbed out of his shoulders. Some luck for once. Just in case.

“So how come I got my food half off ‘cause she saw me talking to you?”

At the edge of his vision, Cain blinked, startled, out of the lingering stare he’d had on Casper since they started walking, dopey grin and all. “What?”

Casper laughed. “ _Seriously_. Are you high or something? Where did suave mister rich man go?”

“Oh…” Cain cheeks flushed, and that touch of colour contrasted starkly against how it had been before. Not even a hint of the bite of cold, and he still walked in that shirt and trousers as if it were the middle of summer. Nut. “I think that was the difference.”

Cain nudged Casper around the corner onto a narrower street. Residential, lined with tall terraces with a posh old-timey vibe. The city fell even quieter here, and all the cars outside were shiny and new. Dark, heavy trees shaded the distant end, looming above wrought-iron fencing.

Drunk confidence then. Casper could appreciate that, and this—this was far more endearing. It put him at ease. Hopefully not too much at ease.

“You going to tell me why I got my food cheap, then?” Casper asked.

“ _Oh_. Did you?”

Casper nodded. “Half off after she grilled me about talking to you. How come?”

“Ah…” Cain's long fingers ran over his lips. “I go there a lot.”

“She didn’t bow to you ‘cause you go there a lot.”

Cain muttered an inaudible word with a rueful sort of smile on his lips. 

For a moment, there was only the precise taps of Cain's shoes against the paving stones and the muddy thumps of Casper’s boots. A car slid past, sleek and black and almost silent. Even got a bit cold as it came past, and Cain frowned at it, his fingers dancing a little through the air. What was that smell? Just a little wisp but it stunk like something had died. 

Was it him? Surreptitiously, Casper pulled his collars out and sniffed. _Goddamn Roach, you need a shower_. Not quite death though. He’d been worse.

Cain’s words startled Casper out of his thoughts. “ _Alright_. This sounds dreadful though.”

“Hit me with it.”

“Well, it was the Chinese I used to go to - a while ago, when I lived somewhere else, but they weren’t doing so well - the area, you know? So, when I moved _here_ , I…” 

Cain grimaced, fingers scratching at the back of his neck as he studied the houses they passed. One of the little balconies was so abundant with plants that the railing was lost amongst the leaves. 

“I bought the new shop," Cain said, "and put some money into their business to get it running, that sort of thing.”

Cain's eyes flickered down and must have found Casper gaping at him, because he looked away again and groaned. “That really sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? I didn’t _buy_ it or anything. It’s just my favourite Chinese and— _god_ , I’m just making it worse, aren’t I?”

So he was _that_ kind of rich. The bring your favourite Chinese with you when you move rich. Fucking hell. Was Casper even wearing anything new? Shit, did he even buy his boxers new or were they a pair that had been too small for Jack? _Shit_. He’d even cut his hair himself. Why was this guy even looking twice at him? What did he _want_?

Cain's cheeks were bright red, free fingers tugging at his shirt cuff. Like he was embarrassed by it.

For fuck’s sake.

“So you mean you actually meant it’s _your_ Chinese.”

“ _No_. I—I mean that’s the point. It was a gift. They just don’t charge me anymore – you know because I—” Cain's words died as Casper burst out laughing, the scratching sound ringing down the empty street, and Cain groaned. 

They stopped by the fence, a small gate set into an ingress in the rails, and Cain sighed, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

Was this it? A shiny padlock glared up at them from the heavy chain looped around the gate and the fencepost. Casper gave it a rattle. Locked. “So much for your park.”

“Well I was hoping you wouldn’t be too averse to climbing over…”

So mister suave-when-drunk dopey rich man didn’t mind some breaking and entering. Certainly nice to know.

The fence looked climbable, spikes on top every other post, sure, but Casper was lithe and limber and built for exactly this sort of thing. Problem was the fence was ungodly high and he was a short prick. He couldn’t reach the crossbar with his foot on the filigree, and his foot would be jammed in too tight to jump.

“Fuck sake,” Casper muttered, and shrugged off his coat, a black wool trench coat that brushed the floor. Cain raised an eyebrow as he handed it to him. “Hold it.”

Hooked over one finger, Cain held it up, a dull, dark shape in the dusky light. “This is a nice coat.”

Casper backed up, scowling at the fence as he stuck his gloves in his pocket. “No, it’s not.”

“I disagree. It suits you.”

“Sure, but it’s a shit coat.”

“Again, I disagree.”

No point disagreeing back. Casper rocked back on his heel and took a running jump at the fence. One foot hit a post and he pushed up. The iron of the crossbar bit like a knife of ice into his palms. A scramble and he got to the top, a spike jutting threateningly up at his balls. After a moment eating up the satisfaction, he jumped neatly off into a crouch.

Cain didn’t say anything, but a certain smugness coloured his grin. Casper took the coat passed through the fence and caught the tied bag of Chinese thrown over to him, then got busy putting his coat back on. _  
_

_Cold as tits out_ , Jack would say. Casper didn’t really know what that meant. Never held a pair of tits in his life but he figured they were warm.

Also thinking about Jack could fuck right off. L _ook at me, asshole, I picked up a guy who’ll buy me a yacht for a blowie._

Better if he didn’t think about that either.

The fence posed no problem to Cain, reached the crossbar easy. He grinned at Casper when he landed, not even a hair out of place.

Rolling his eyes, Casper threw Cain back the chinese bag. “That’s just showing off.”

“And you weren’t?” Cain asked.

“Well, I’ve got to woo you somehow.”

Laughing, Cain set a path off between some trees. Asshole even had a fuck-me laugh. After seeking the cold metal at his waistband again, Casper set off after him.

Seemed like it’d be a nice sort of park in the daytime, thick trees but the undergrowth had been cleared from between them and they walked along a carpet of rotting leaves and pine needles steeply uphill. The canopy overhead blocked out the sky, great swathes of the trees evergreen. 

Nowhere in the city smelt quite so fresh as it did in this grove, and if it weren’t for the distant rumble of traffic and the whir of some nearby generator, he could almost pretend he was away from it all. A vast forest out in the middle of nowhere.

The treeline broke into the universe scattered across the ground, and kudos word-nerd, it was spectacular. 

Casper stopped just inside the treeline, his breath tight and hitching in his chest, while Cain strolled down the slope. It eased out to a bench perched atop a cliff above the entire city. 

Up here, urban squalor spun out into a tapestry of neon verve, threads of growling traffic weaving together an abstract war. Building lights burst across it like little supernovas.

Why had he never been here before? All these years and he’d never even bothered to climb the hill. His pestilent apathy slapped him in the face and nearly brought tears to his eyes.

The dim orange haze of the sky and all the city glow behind him cast Cain’s face into shadow as he looked back, his silhouette a bit of night peeking free of the amber muck.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Cain said.

Casper could only nod, his hand pressed over his mouth to hide the way his lips trembled.

“Are you coming? Your food will go cold and I kn—”

The break hung abrupt in the air. A snapped twig ending that jolted Casper out of his slow awe. Cain's fingers carded back through his hair as he half-turned, his profile an aquiline carving against the sky. A quickening of Casper's heart, and with a deep breath, he went down to the bench.

Way up here, the breeze came quick and sharp even though the air had hung slow in the streets. It bit into his skin and ruffled the edges of his clothes. This high, it almost lost the petrol stink, and something fresher breathed through it. Sweet petrichor splashing a raindrop across his tongue. 

Cain's whole shirt rippled, catching the wind like a sail unfurling on the high seas, but he stood unconcerned as if it were the balmiest of summer gusts. The silence as Cain handed out the food once they’d both sat down felt like him giving Casper a moment to absorb the view.

It was so much better looking out at the city while the wind whipped against your skin and the heavens touched the horizon. Almost at the crooked kiss of sky to land, the lights faded, sparse then gone all together, and where those lights ended felt like the place where life started.

“I wish everywhere was like this.” Casper's throat felt tight and his broken voice wouldn’t lift above a whisper. “It feels real.”

“Like what?”

“ _Real_. Green, open, natural. I hate it down there. I feel so trapped all the time. I just want to look out my window at night and see the stars.”

The wind whistled in the silence between them. Had that been too much already? Casper peeked out of the corner of his eyes. The city lit Cain up now: the slow, breathless smile on his lips, his food forgotten on his lap, elbow on the back of the bench and his head resting in his hand. 

Staring. 

At Casper.

Fucking asshole didn’t have an inch of shame. Gave it all to Casper instead, heating up his cheeks with this blatant ogling.

Food. Talk about food. Nice and simple. Casper picked his up, tapped the chopsticks between his fingers and pointed them at Cain. The address by the wood startled Cain, all wide blinking eyes again, and Casper startled himself by giggling.

 _Giggling_. Shit.

“What did you get?” Casper asked.

“Shrimp Thai green curry. You?”

“Seriously? You can’t get the shrimp curry!”

“Well I wouldn’t have if I’d known I’d be eating it with you!”

If there were more colour to the light, Casper was sure that shadowing on Cain's cheeks as he turned his head away would be bright pink. Casper poked him in the arm with chopsticks, and when Cain's eyes turned begrudgingly back, Casper asked, “Why does that make a difference?”

“So I’m not that guy who gets shrimp curry at the chinese.”

Casper laughed. “It’s alright, you’re already that guy who took his local chinese with him when he moved house.”

A groan. Cain slumped back in his seat, fingers back through his hair and a helpless smile on his face. “Oh, piss off. I wish I never told you that. What have you got anyway?”

“Changing the subject?”

“ _Yes_.”

“I got vegetable udon noodles and these spring rolls.”

A delicate arch lifted Cain's eyebrow, his hair tousling on a stray gust, and it looked as if Casper had finally found someone who did raised eyebrows better than him. “You’re a vegetarian?”

The sandwich chicken Casper had scoffed at his last trick’s wouldn’t agree but... “I try my best.”

Cain nodded slow and tilted the container—rice in a creamy green sauce—toward Casper. The motion of Cain's hands didn’t distract from how ... intent his eyes were. Seriously, who got intent about vegetarianism? 

“I suppose you don’t want to try some of this then,” Cain said.

Casper shook his head and shifted around on the bench so that he faced Cain more, one of his knees bent up against the back. “Let me have some rice.”

It was good. No denying that. Light and fresh and a little hot, creamy with coconut and lime. Casper pinched a shrimp, evading Cain's snap with his chopsticks, and planted it in his mouth around the laughter.

“Oi!”

“This is good!” _Jesus Christ, Roach, at least swallow it first._ “Congratulations, you’ve converted me.”

“I’m sure that poor shrimp would disagree.”

Casper groaned. “Stop it. It’s barely got a brain cell.”

A broad smile spread across Cain's lips, even a glint of the city lights against his teeth. His head tipped back. Shadow cradled the side turned away from the galaxy beneath them while his eyes traced Casper’s face. Funny that Casper still wasn’t quite sure what colour Cain's eyes were.

Funny how he wanted to know.

A wooden clack snapped through Casper's sappy falling into Cain's eyes crap and Casper tore his gaze away from the stars glinting in them. No more of that this evening. Absolutely not. Roach Boy didn’t do _getting lost in his eyes_. Getting lost in eyes meant feelings and he couldn’t afford feelings.

Cain's voice slid soft through the susurrus whisper of the wind. “Eat your food, Casper. It’ll go cold.”

Shit, and his name in that velvet voice already had him melting. _Play it cool_. “Alright, _dad_.”

“Piss off, brat.”

Asshole. Grinning, Casper popped the lid off his noodles and gazed out across the city while he ate. He didn’t turn his body away from Cain, elbow hooked on the back of the bench.

The city was so goddamn beautiful he couldn’t really breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing my stupidly long dialogue scenes. But they're just too cute, right? I'm sure some of this dialogue isn't essential, but in my creator's eye, at least, everything brings another aspect of their chemistry or personalities to light.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! And thanks again for reading this far! Leave me a kudos, or comment to let me know how you think it's going to go <3


	6. Worms

Only the whisper of the wind and the soft rustle of nocturnal life in the forest behind them accompanied them while they ate. The chirp of insects braving the cold; an owl's hoot. Perhaps that snapped twig was a fox or a rabbit. The drone of traffic still underlaid it all, but it was distant here. Secondary to the immediate world.

Cain's eyes kept trailing to him, Casper could see that in the corner of his and resolutely, he stayed staring out at the city. Damn idiot buying noodles. Every time they trailed too far past his mouth – the limp, greasy tentacles of a cosmic horror still living in its mum’s basement – his cheeks heated up while he broke them back off into the container. Why did that idiot have to watch him eat? He ate like a ghoul with its face buried in a corpse.

Eventually the mouthful just hurt to swallow, throat tight and dry. His skin itched, down his spine and a flush across his cheeks. Casper gulped it down and forced out the scratch of his voice. “Stop looking at me.”

Wide-eyed, a clump of rice dropped from between Cain’s chopsticks. Who could even eat rice with chopsticks anyway? Especially that elegantly. “What? I’m—I’m sorry I just—”

Casper shook his head, the blood in his cheeks rising to the boil and his eyes fixed on the dwindling pile of noodles. “I can’t eat when people look at me. It—” He jammed his chopsticks in the noodles and rubbed at his scarred cheek. “Never mind. I’m done—”

“No! No, it’s alright. I’m sorry. Here—" Cain’s chopsticks wound a noodle out of the pile of worms and pulled it back with a scrap of cabbage which he placed on his tongue. “It’s still warm. Finish it. I’m not watching, I promise.”

Like he wasn’t too fucking embarrassed to eat now anyway. No matter that when he glanced up, Cain had his eyes fixed firmly out on the city, turned just to the left away from Casper. All lax, easy lines, even his slouch seemed unduly elegant, elbow up on the back of the bench holding the Chinese container up to his mouth. He didn’t _look_ weirded out. Still fucking smiling. Casper sighed and leant sideways against the back of the bench.

“Can we talk at least? I’m making it weird, I’m sorry.”

Cain’s eyes flickered back to him, all soft and sweet and smiling, then away again, and he spoke out to the cityscape before them. “You’re not. Don’t worry. You’re just … I like looking at you, but it doesn’t mean I get to stare like an absolute creep.”

A shock of warmth bloomed in Casper’s chest, cooling his face to something tropical and heady. He ducked his head and prodded around at his noodles. He’d had to think _worms,_ didn’t he? Big, fat slimy worms…

“You have been staring quite a lot.”

“And here I thought I was being at least a little subtle… I suppose it’s a good thing you didn’t notice me until later at the bar. I don’t think I could take my eyes off you the whole time.”

Shit. Another shock jolted through his ribs, this one in the stutter-stop of his heart. The worms swum in their slick broth, glistening bodies writhing together in an orgy of base pleasure. Juices oozed from those blunt heads, digestive slime eating away at the rotting vegetation they’d dragged into their nest.

“Casper?”

The primal stew almost spilt over his legs as he jumped, some churn of his stomach surging up his throat. Cain was looking at him again, brows drawn together and his empty container set down the other side of him, chopsticks squared neatly on top.

Hadn’t he had like half of that left?

“Casper? Are you alright?”

“I…” Casper glanced down at his lap. Yeah, still worms. “I think I grossed myself out of eating my food.”

“ _What_?”

“Look!” The broth almost sloshed out again as he shoved it out toward Cain. “They look like worms!”

“I mean … a little, I suppose…”

“It’s like an orgy of blind subterranean worms. Seriously, I can’t eat it.”

Laughter burst from Cain’s lips, bright and sharp like it shocked him to find it. His fingers slid through his hair as he sunk against the bench facing Casper. That soft wonder suffused his whole face again, casting the city light that illuminated his eyes to a rose-tinted glow. It looked soft, his hair. It looked as if it’d feel like silk between his fingers.

“If you say so… I can get you something else on the way back, if you like? It’s free anyway.”

It was, but Casper would never take him up on it anyway. Regardless, “I’ll eat it when I get home.” Casper snapped the lid back on and handed that and the spring rolls to Cain when he held out his hand. Everything went in the bag, tucked neatly under the bench.

Cain didn’t mention leaving. Casper didn’t want to. It felt as if he could sit out here all night and still not want to go home, no matter how the cold ached across his cheekbones and through his nose, a deep grumble against the burning chill on his fingertips and the tip of his nose and the rough, chapped skin on his lips. But he didn’t know if that was the place, the isolation, or how home meant nothing but a cramped flat, alone in the dark as he stared at the ceiling, light creeping in and sleep still miles away no matter how high he dragged himself, and each hour brought him closer to the next debasement.

Every job was a debasement when you looked like he did. When you _were_ him. People didn’t buy his body to treat it like a pretty thing. Roach boy was built for filth.

What sick mind was Cain hiding behind that awestruck smile?

_Fucking sort it out, Roach Boy. Wallow when you’re stuck by yourself._

Didn’t mean shit that he didn’t deserve it. He was here, wasn’t he? Leech mouth with its ring of needle teeth stuck into his smooth skin. Was it smooth? It’d always been too dim to really tell, but it must be just like his hair. Like silk.

Get to know the guy. That’s what you did, wasn’t it? Ask him what his job is. What’s his salary and how many pushups he can do in one go.

“You seen Star Trek?”

_Nice one, you fucking cretin._

But hey, Cain was just about beaming sunshine from that smile. Slam dunk from Roach Boy.

“ _Obviously,_ ” he said. “Best series?”

“Definitely the original.”

“Oh come on. You can’t say the original, that’s such a cop out.”

“What’s _your_ favourite series then?”

“Deep space nine.” A slow crooked smile lifted one corner of Cain’s mouth. “And the original.”

“Ha!” Casper sat up and wiggled his fingers at Cain. “Alright – do you read?”

“Voraciously.”

“There’s my next question ticked off – do you use words like voraciously, you weirdo.”

Cain rolled his eyes. His hand slipped into his trouser pocket and came up with a pack of straights. He put one between his lips and spoke around it. “Remind me to cross it off my list of words to use on a date. Here—” he held out the pack— “want one?

Like he’d still be Roach Boy if he turned down a free cigarette. When he had it hanging from his lips, Cain snapped open a Zippo and they bent in together to light them from the dancing flame. Cain’s shielding hand hid them from the wind and the city beyond behind like they whispered secrets together. Like they hid a kiss from the world.

The flame lent his eyes an amber tint. The glow of the streetlights. A sliver of the sun trapped in the rays of his eyes. They devoured him.

Smooth smoke flooded Casper’s mouth on the rolling sands of the desert, the heat of Cain’s eyes stealing all moisture from dunes that had once been luscious jungle. Casper held it. Lungs straining, heart pounding, he held onto the moment. The heat of the flame against his lips and the slightest tickle of that silken hair against his cheek as the wind rippled through it. The way each of Cain’s sharp breaths came hitched and laden with smoke, lit cigarette still between his parted lips.

He drank it all in until black edged his vision and his eyes fluttered closed and then, behind the thin veil of smoke whisked away on the wind, he leant back. Away. The chill air sunk its claws into his face and shivering, Casper pulled his coat tighter.

“You’re so bloody beautiful,” Cain said, and his words came hoarse like the low, awed breaths, “you know that?”

A jolt shot through Casper’s chest, a bloom of fuzzy warmth chasing out the cobwebbed chill. Had anyone ever called him beautiful before?

Jack liked hot. Jack liked sexy. Sometimes he even went pretty or cute. Both of them knew Casper wasn’t beautiful. Inside or out.

Shit. Casper rubbed his hand against his cheek and took a deep drag on his cigarette. His heart pattered like mice feet. Why couldn’t it stop doing that? “Not _pulchritudinous_?”

A groan, the last of the trance shaken off, and with his fingers sliding back through his hair, he took a drag as well. “Oh piss off. That’s the last time I use a word more than two syllables.”

“Syl-la-bles.”

Cain glared at him, ruined by the playful smile crooking the corner of his lips. “ _That’s_ the last time.”

Cute. Definitely too cute. Casper hunkered down, elbows on the knees of his crossed legs, and smirked up at Cain whose dark eyes traced the ember of Casper's cigarette as he put it to his lips, the cherry flaring bright in the darkness.

“Who said this was a date anyway, rich boy?”

It might have been comical, the way his face fell, if it wasn’t so sweet. A slow fall to kicked-dog eyes and a pouting bottom lip until he shook his head and mastered the expression. “No one, I suppose...”

Casper pouted at him, chin resting on his knuckles. A drift of ash whipped away in the wind. “Better mind your tongue then.”

“Alright—” Cain twisted in his seat, arm over the back of the bench and his cheek resting on his loose fist. Shadows gathered beneath his cheekbones sharpened them to carved marble and his voice harkened to the old black-gold velvet. “Call this a turn of fate then, _pretty boy_ , and I’ll ask the question. Let me take you on a date.”

Shit and it was hard to keep the grin off. Best he could do was limit it to widening the smirk. Casper wagged the cigarette back and forth before him, the glow caught like an ember buried in his eyes. “And how’re you going to make that worth my while?”

“Mm...” Cain tilted his head further to the side, heat simmering behind every precise turn of his features to pure sin and the crooked half-smile put him right back behind the bar, his blood racing as this stranger made him melt. “I’ll play then, Casper. What's your time worth?”

The coy reply died unspoken, sinking and rotting to nothing more than a black pit of nausea in his stomach. And it hadn’t been going to be about money. Maybe he’d been going to ask for a kiss, but...

He really prodded that question out like an expert.

The breath of smoke scratched through his voice as he spoke down to his lap. “Don’t ask me that.”

A hiss, forced between Cain's teeth, and his body closed off, turned away and shut down. Casper cut back in before he could speak. Shit, his chest was getting all tight now. It made his voice even worse. All stupid and cracking.

“I didn’t think I’d actually be talking to you like this when I made that a joke, I’m sorry. Just don’t, please. It’s—it doesn’t feel right.”

His response came soft, a single word. “Why?”

And for some god-fucking-forsaken reason, Casper told him. Call it the exhaustion and the dope-sickness creeping in.

“Because every time you ask, up here—” Casper tapped his head— “I’m checking my price list. Five hundred for a date, if you’re wondering. Don’t like them. Every time someone forks it out, I’ve gotta sit there remembering I’ve never been on a real one.”

“Oh.”

 _Oh._ Summed it up, didn’t it? What would it be tomorrow? Hungover, he’d sprawl in bed staring at the ceiling until a call came in. Five men want you in my house later. Two holes, three dicks. Bring dope and drink the spiked drink they give you, so you won’t remember it in the morning. Maybe meet me in a scummy motel room – old, fat, tiny dick, pretend to moan while I hump you for five minutes and refuse to pay an hour.

Earlier this week, he’d gone to his fourth of the day, last one before he headed to an overnight, and the guy had beaten him up and stolen his money and kicked him out because he’d come too high to even struggle.

Someone else had punched him in the face, but they’d paid him to do that.

That tight feeling knotted through his throat and beneath his eyes, a deepening of the aching cold sinking into his bones. It was that feeling that felt like crying, but it had been so, so long since he’d been able to cry.

A survival mechanism he hadn’t been able to shed.

If only he could make himself look up to at least look out at the city. The expanse of the sky might loosen the rope tightening around his neck. Might at least jerk it closed and get it over with. Casper picked at the white lichen splattered across the rough wood of the bench with the edge of his thumbnail. Nice bench, really. Old and solid, like a relic of the times when people cared about things like benches in parks in the sky.

How could you care about benches when the world died only a little slower than your panicked scrabble to the bottom? How blessed would it be to find someone to slow that plummet just a little?

Now he’d gone and messed it all up.


	7. Ice

Casper swallowed around the tight thickness jammed up in his throat and stubbed the burnt-out cigarette into the bench. Cain still hadn’t said another word, but shit, there was no way he could walk away from him tonight if he at least didn’t try his best. He might as well still be the stranger – Casper didn’t know a damn thing about him but something about the way he felt…

“It’s—” The word hardly came out, a broken shell of itself. Casper coughed and tried again. “It was yes, by the way. I’d like to. Go on a date with you. If—Like, if you still—”

“Casper—”

“ _No_ —No, I get it if you don’t. I mean it’s fucked, right? No one—”

“ _Casper._ ”

Stern enough to startle him out of his babbling, but the instinctive flinch up to his face … only softness. Vast, tragic, like Casper wasn’t just this fucked up little ghoul he’d seen twice in his fucking life. And when Casper met his eyes, somehow, he smiled.

Like the sun.

“I still want to,” Cain murmured, resting his hand on the back of the bench just beside Casper. Not touching. That was nice. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. I want to take you on a date, and I want to get to know you. There’s…” the smile quirked higher at one corner, a glint in his eyes, “…there’s something special about you, Casper. I want to find out what it is.”

_Oh._

Nothing else to say really.

“Thank you.” The whisper was all he could manage. A shiver ran through him, down his spine, and Casper pulled his coat closed against a fresh gale. Cain sat serene with the wind rippling through his thin shirt and sending out tendrils of his soft hair as if he sat beneath the sea. A smile crept onto Casper’s lips watching him. No one had any right looking that serene in this weather. “That sounds really, really good. Thank you.”

“Truly my pleasure.”

Hadn’t he said he wasn’t going to go _falling into eyes_ like forty minutes ago? An hour? The wind had gotten a lot colder, and perhaps some of the tapestry spread below them had dimmed.

His fingers were fucking _numb._ Another shiver wracked him. A deeper one, at least. All his muscles were already taut against the cold. Not even a hint of warmth beneath his coat for him to jam his fingers into.

“Are you cold?” Cain asked. Still sitting there like it wasn’t biting at sub-zero.

“Fucking freezing. Aren’t you?”

“Mm.” A frown drew Cain's brows together and he rubbed his hand over his jaw. “No, I’m alright.”

Call him crazy but that was _weird._ Probably showed on his face too because Cain started up out of his slouch. “ _Oh_ , this is where I offer you my coat or—” His hand closed on nothing at his collar and a deep grimace settled across his lips. “I’m not wearing one, am I?”

Casper shook his head.

“That’s weird, isn’t it?”

A grin pulling at his mouth, Casper nodded. “I’ll settle for body warmth if it’s on offer.”

A flicker ran through his face, a cryptic pool of emotion, and it fell back into the grimace. “I’d love to but...” A sigh. “Here—” he held out his hand, the sleeves already rolled back to bare his strong forearm to the cold—“touch.”

What a fucking weirdo. Did Cain want to touch him or not? Indulge him. That was a nice forearm. Perfect, even, just like the rest of him.

Perfect. _Did you actually just think that?_ Casper reached out and brushed his—

“What the fuck?”

Casper pulled off his fingerless glove and closed his hand over Cain's arm. It wasn’t just the cold, it was _freezing._ Just how it seemed it would be like gripping those cold marble statues that looked like real life. Casper's heart pounded. Like he hung on to death.

“See?” A weak question, poor attempt at levity. “I’ll just make you colder.”

“Alright—” Casper released his arm and held up his hands—“I’m doing this straight away – are you a vampire?”

Shocked laughter burst from Cain's lips. He slumped back against the bench and shook his head. “ _No_ , I’m not a vampire.”

That was a little disappointing. Vampires would have made his life more interesting. Casper lowered his hands, nodding slowly. “I suppose there was enough garlic in your Chinese...”

On some stupid little impulse, Casper whipped his hands back up, two fingers together in the shape of a cross in Cain's face. “ _Cristo!”_

Cain flinched back from the hands shoved in his face, and as Casper spoke, voice hoarse with laughter, a breathtaking smile suffused Cain’s whole face.

The kiss he pressed to Casper's fingers felt like the first touch of snow.

It hung in the air between them. Casper's hands drifted down to his lap and his heart pounded so hard he couldn’t breathe. Cain's eyes held all the simmering heat that was missing from his skin, beautiful and entrancing and Casper drowned in them.

Cain slid his fingers through the side of his hair and kissed him. His lips were cold and heart-rending soft, and Casper melted beneath them as if he were ice left out in the baking sun.

If the peck had been a snowflake, this was a blizzard, and Casper wanted it to sweep him away forever.

But he made himself stop. Just short of where that ache would pull him up into Cain's lap, straddling his hips and taking it the only direction he knew how – filth. Cain's hand didn’t move from his hair and the other slipped beneath his scarf to press against his neck, like a shard of ice against his skin, and it was so gorgeously pure he couldn’t bear to ruin it.

His heart kept pounding even when he pulled back. Jackhammer against his ribs. Cain's breath drifted across his lips as cold as the wind whipping around them and his eyes...

“I’m sorry,” Cain whispered. His hand still cradled Casper's head, thumb rubbing soft just above his ear. It felt so nice he wanted to cry. “I couldn’t bear not to.”

“It’s okay.” And it was. His hands, he realised, were still wound up in Cain's shirt, and he didn’t really wanted to let go. “So ... not a vampire?”

Cain laughed, the same bright, shocked laughter as before. His fingers pressed deeper against Casper’s skin and then, with a snowflake kiss against the tip of his nose, drew away.

“Not a vampire,” he promised.

“I’m reserving judgement until I see you in the light.”

“Very well, a daytime date then. I think I have an idea...”

Casper nodded, smiling. A daytime date sounded even better than an evening one. No drinks or sitting fancy for evening meals. Just ... a regular day.

“You’re not a zombie, are you?”

“Not a zombie either.”

“Not any kind of dead?”

“Very much alive, I believe.”

“Some kind of ice-aspected mythological creature?”

Cain laughed, easy and relaxed just like the smile on his lips, and spread his arms along the back of the bench. “At least mostly human, I like to think.”

Somehow it didn’t seem like he meant that the same way Casper thought about himself. Not with that cold-blooded flesh. Maybe his life was about to get a bit more interesting...

“You aren’t going to tell me then?”

The back of his knuckles brushed along Casper's jaw, chill. “Another time. It’s a very long story, and _you—”_ he sat up and stretched his arms above his head—“You are far too cold to stay up here any longer.”

As much as he wanted to deny it, stay here forever, he really couldn’t feel a single extremity anymore, and maybe this ache in his body wasn’t just the cold. The inside of his elbow itched. Soon it’d creep into his veins and he’d start to sweat.

Better to leave before he fell apart and hope Cain really meant he wanted to see him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I might've lied and there's another one just after this. But they are leaving the hill at least.... They just won't stop talking though!
> 
> Drop a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this though (thanks for sticking in for the long haul)
> 
> So what does everyone think of Cain? What's going on with this cold skin business? Is he a vampire? (spoiler: please don't expect vampires) 
> 
> We'll stick with at least mostly human for now ;)


	8. Remember Me

They walked back to the gate in a comfortable quiet, side by side, and climbed back over with little fanfare. No cars rumbled along the main road ahead of them and for the entire length of that quiet street, only two lights still winked at the night. Only at the end of the road where their ways would part did they pause.

Seemed like a goodbye - one that Casper was irritatingly reluctant to make - but before he could _hastily_ get it done before he got maudlin about things, Cain asked if he could walk him home.

Casper probably only agreed because he said _can_ , rather than make any implication about Casper's ability to walk himself home, but ... stupid how hard that smile was to suppress as they started the walk, Cain swinging the Chinese bag by its handle and just ... just smiling. The whole damn time he didn't stop looking like he didn't want to be anywhere else in the world.

How come he ever deserved that?

They got talking about books on the way back. Turned out Cain was just as much of a _voracious_ scifi nerd as he was, even if he angled more to literature while Casper went to fantasy and horror. They had so much common ground that it _had_ to be fate meeting like this. Just in the fifteen minutes, Casper agreed to lend him his favourite book that Cain had never read next time they met, and Cain promised to have _at least mostly_ finished it by their next date.

They arranged that second one too, watching a film based on a book they both loved, but Cain stuck to whatever surprise he had planned for the first and that made Casper so stupid fuzzy warm that by the time they got to his rundown building and stopped outside the door, he had his scarf pulled up to his eyes to hide this stupid smile. He hadn't even meant to take the guy to his fucking building. He just _walked_ there, but at least he wouldn't know which flat it was.

Cars roared past while they stood at the foot of the crumbling high-rise. A gang of kids all in tracksuits on stolen bikes hung out down the road. He knew those ones, the ginger and the skinhead and the really tall gangly one. Jack caught them heckling once and even though it had been a long-standing _thing_ of them heckling Casper and him selling them underweighed grams after heckling them back, he went off so hard the kids had been terrified of him since. Shame. They'd made him some good money.

There'd been a lock and a keypad on the door once, but it had broken before Casper had moved in and no one had ever fixed it, so if anyone ever wanted to walk into the lobby with its threadbare floral carpet and peeling wallpaper, they could. Casper had come back from work and found hobo's sleeping down there more than once, and he usually gave them a cigarette if they were awake and wanted one. Least he could do seeing as he pretty much never had food.

What was Cain's place like? Solid gold fucking doorknob, probably, but his lip didn't curl, no judging glare at the plant pot overflowing with sodden cigarette butts beside them. Would he even show it if he was judging it? No way of knowing. No way of knowing with any of this, and it was so, _so_ easy to fake.

There was a light above the door. A good bright one, and in that light, Casper got his best look at Cain's face yet.

His eyes were the same nutty brown as an acorn, all full of deep amber rays.

At the obvious _there's no way I'm telling you which flat I'm in_ pause, Cain leant against the dirty white-washed wall and watched Casper with a soft smile on his lips.

"Dare I say I already can't wait until I see you again?"

Perhaps he shouldn't have. It was probably a lie anyway. Casper rolled his eyes and pretended to dig around in his pocket for a key. The tight aching muscles had persisted, and so had the shiver. Lethargy gripped his mind in its spectral claws. Sharp. His tongue felt inches from tumbling over the edge to some viciousness he only meant when he felt like this.

"Do you want to stay?"

_Idiot._

"Do you _actually_ want me to? And no is completely fine, Casper."

 _Definitely not._ But Cain questioning it brought him up short from insisting. "I..."

Cain's fingers grazed his cheek. The scarred one, even though he had to reach across to it. "I'll see you in then go home. I, ah—" He glanced down at his watch. "Ah, I have to be up in three hours. Lovely. And honestly, Cas ... I don't think staying's the best thing for—"

Casper snatched his hand up to his chest, stomach turning. The indigo haze of a storm brewed in the back of his mind. " _Not the best thing_? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh _cock._ " Cain's face turned instantly contrite. "I mean me. I'd—"

"You mean you're going to come up and fuck me and when you fucking leave, you're gonna laugh and piss off when I _inevitably_ ask for money, right? What else could I _possibly_ want you to come up for, right?"

"No! Cas, I— _no._ I mean I _won't_ and like I'd just bloody _leave_ if I did anyway and I'm—I can't believe something like this is actually happening to me and I don't want to cock it up. I told you, Cas—" Cain stepped forward and cradled his jaw in his hands, shocking cold, so wrong with the passion lighting up his eyes, a strain in the panicked deluge of his words— "You're something special. It's—It's fate, or _something,_ but I'm—I—"

"Shut up!"

The river of his words stemmed at Casper's rasp, and perhaps now those wide eyes took in how Casper's face trembled. He wanted it to stop, for it to just do what he wanted and bare his teeth or spit on him or fucking something, but he could barely stop it from crumbling entirely. Fuck, he needed to just tear away and stop looking at Cain's fucking face, but his hands were like ice against the burns searing his mind.

So many things that bridled against his tongue, but in the end, only one mattered.

"I'm not special."

He was roach boy. Nothing but filth.

Cain didn't say anything. He just bundled Casper up in his arms and kissed him until he couldn't breathe, until it all got too much and he tore away just to press his face into Cain's shoulder and shudder with all the shitty chaos of anger and self-loathing and suffocating apathy and how his heart beat so hard he couldn't take it.

His body ached so fucking much and everything was so fucking cold.

"I'm sorry," Casper croaked. The soft cotton against his mouth almost swallowed it. "I'm having a really bad time right now."

Long fingers scratched through the back of his hair, just beneath the band of his beanie. The other hand pressed on the middle of his back, holding him close. "It's alright. Come on, you should sleep, Cas. You look so tired..."

Well he was doing fucking great if strangers were telling him he needed to sleep. Not to mention the swerved breakdown. Enough of this. Casper pulled back and rubbed his hand over his eyes. Dry. He sniffed anyway. It felt like he should. Cain's face was too sad to look at so he looked at the floor instead, stuck his hands in his pockets to hide how fucking bad they shook.

"Why don't I come in for a bit? I can warm your food up for you and—"

Casper glanced up. Such earnestness in that face. Why did he care so much? How could anyone care that much? A wave of sadness lifted in his chest and Casper turned away. Why didn't Jack care that much?

"No. You're—you're right. I need to ... sleep. You're the one who said you have to get up in four hours anyway."

No fall in his face to that denial. How ... refreshing. "Then I'll see you again soon, Cas. You've got my number, right?"

"Yeah, I already blocked it in case you work out what my real one is."

"You— _Oh._ " Cain rolled his eyes. Passing headlights flashed dazzling across his grin. "Brat. Well, in the case that you change your mind and _un_ block my number, I'll see you next week."

Next week. _Already too long_. Which was a _stupid_ thing to think, so his head could fuck off with that. Casper scuffed his feet on the floor and looked out across the street. A drunk woman in a dirty tracksuit stumbled down the opposite side of the road. "Next week," he said. "Sounds good."

Cain's shoe clicked against the paving slab. A step closer, but another past him, further away. "Goodbye then, Cas."

"Cain?"

"Yes?"

Casper shifted, foot to foot, and slid his eyes back the other way. Reflected in the glass door, Cain had paused, a smile just visible in his murky features.

_Don't be an idiot, Casper. Just say bye. And fucking look at him._

"Can I—" _Fuck's sake._ "Kiss me again, before—"

Ice cold lips stole his words. A breathtaking shock of electric. Breaking away—

Casper snarled his fingers through Cain's hair and kissed him with all this stupid, sappy fuzzy _whatever_ fluttering about inside him and making his heart fucking _ache_. Not that it made it go away. It just twisted in deeper, panting through his chest. Cain's hands slipped under his hoodie and jumper and t-shirt and with his blood running so hot, the cold _burnt._ His hands felt so fucking gorgeous, long-fingers curled around his waist and the other sliding up his spine as he bent over him and plunged his tongue into his mouth.

So good. So, so fucking good. His heart was going to fucking give out but what did he fucking need it for with these lips that made his whole body scream _alive_.

By the time Cain broke away, Casper was on the verge of tears, and the desperate, searching need in Cain's eyes as he held him close almost sent him over the edge. Just a second of their ragged breaths as they fell into each other's eyes and Cain kissed him again, and Casper tumbled to the soft surrender.

No one had ever held him this gently and kissed him with so much aching passion in his life.

Not even close.

The next time he broke, Cain twisted his head away, buried his face against Casper's throat. His breath panted like puffs of ice against his fever-hot skin, and at the very breathy edges, he moaned.

"Right—" Careful, slow, Cain slid his hands back from under Casper's top and wrapped his arms around his waist just beneath the coat and squeezed— "Right—" A shiver, like he was trying to gather himself, like his mind was scattered to the wind right alongside Casper's. A gap opened in the traffic, like for a moment they stood in a muffled bubble outside the world. Up above them, a polluted glow blotted out the stars but for once the stars were right here, spinning around his head just behind the veil of light.

_So goddamn fucking right._

"Right—" A final time, and with far more certainty— "I'm going to let go and walk straight away because I swear if I look at you one more time, Cas, I'll never let you go."

A gasp broke Casper's lips. No matter how cold he was, the way Cain held him ... safe, secure, the impression of warmth and all its comfort without the presence. So right that he could have been right here a million times before.

Casper's voice trembled with feeling, a scratched whisper to the veil over the sky. "Don't then."

Another shudder. Mouth open with a gasp and slick against Casper's throat. "I have to, Cas. I'll tell you one day, I promise, but I can't do this. Not tonight."

What would he say if Casper told him he didn't want to either? _I just want you to warm up my food and help me tidy my room and lie down in bed with me with my t-shirt and boxers still on and just hold me while I fall to sleep._

Casper squeezed his eyes closed and lowered his hands. "Go on." And Casper tried so hard to make his voice smile but something still fell flat and small and sad. "I'll cover my face while you make a break for it if you like."

"You should, lo—You—" Cain squeezed tighter, laughter soft against his throat. "Cover your eyes, Cas." Just a whisper, his nose brushing behind Casper's ear. "Just five seconds and I'll be gone like the wind."

"Until next week?"

"Until next week. I'll be back on Saturday. But until then ... remember me like this."

God, he couldn't breathe. The city lights slipped across his vision in a haze. Like a dream.

"Three seconds," Casper whispered. "I'll count you out."

"Three seconds. Then cover your eyes and count to five."

"One—"

Cain's breath slipped deep and heavy across his throat. "Two—"

"Three."

His touch vanished and Casper pressed his hands to his face.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four._

_Godlethimstillbethere._

_Five._

But he wasn't.

Just the Chinese bag sitting on the floor and that perfect stranger gone like the fucking wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of that long section. I love this bit (sappy eyes) but it all seems a bit too good to be true, doesn't it...


	9. Mum

Later, once he’d eaten his food and slipped bliss into his veins, Casper laid on his bed with the streetlight casting soft amber light through his thin curtains. Witching hour. The world lay near silent around him, and the dim spark of his life spun through the universe like a speck of dust swirling in the sea. The galaxies strewn across his ceiling in luminescent paint struggled against the dim light and surrounded by the piles of clothes on his box-room floor and the dirty plates coating the sides, tears spilt from his eyes and trickled over his cheeks and into his hair.

He’d forgotten how much crying hurt your eyes.

Casper cleared his throat. In the dark, alone, his voice came smaller than ever. Just a scratch out of the silence.

“I met someone today, mum,” he whispered. “I—I don’t have … I don’t have anyone to tell but … there was … this man. I’d seen him once before and … and it was like fate meeting him again.

“I didn’t think anyone could ever care about me so much. I’ll—I’ll never know if you would have, but … he’s so beautiful. His smile… His eyes… The way he talks is so lovely, it’s so charming and he—he keeps making me laugh and he likes _Star Trek_ and—and the Culture and I bet he likes X-Files and thinks aliens are real but I forgot to ask. I bet he hates the city too and wants to see the world and run away from this prison. I ... I barely know him, but he’s been so, so kind to me and I can’t—”

His voice choked off and he swallowed, hard. The tears dampened his greasy hair and made tide pools in the hollows of his ears.

“I don’t deserve it. If he knew me, he’d feel sick touching my skin. But he—he looks at me like I’m not. Like I’m—Like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and it’s _terrifying_.

“He wants me. All of this, it’s all him looking at me like I’m the answer to all his prayers but—but what if it’s—”

Casper sniffed, snot wet and cold in his throat. A fresh well of tears blurred the dying stars to a galactic swirl.

“We’ve got a date next week. I’m … I’m going to go, I can’t—like I want to run away but I can’t. Like … like I don’t want him to be sad because I don’t go, so I’m going to try and maybe when he—when he really sees me, I won’t make—I won’t make him sick. Maybe he’ll still want me.

“Just let it all be real,” Casper whispered. “Please let it all be real.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's very short, but consider it the interlude to where things start changing.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading <3


	10. Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing, the elusive boyfriend!

Jack was waiting for him when he got home later that week. Thursday. Casper had called it his last day and spent morning till night getting fucked or on his way there.

He'd thrown up bile twice on the way home already, crouched in the dark clutching his head and moaning. The thought of the filthy film of his skin clinging to this sack of bones made him sick. The last guy had kicked him straight out and his fucking ass cheeks rubbed pornographically slick together. It was gross. He wanted to shower in boiling water and scrub himself down to the bone. Maybe that'd wash away the filth for one night.

But then again, no doubt his bones would show brown with grime and nicotine stains too.

Seeing Jack sprawled out on the sofa sent his gorge right up again. That haggard face and the lifeless slump of his shoulders.

Maybe he should just run away again. God knew he fucking should. Jack only wanted one thing being back here, but ... Cain was back in two days...

Too little too late. Jack jumped to his feet when he saw him, tears already swelling across his grey eyes and without question of whether Casper wanted another hand on him ever again, he ran over and swept him up in his arms.

Coffee and cigarettes and whiskey and the place that had once been home.

"Awh fuck, Cas, baby, I missed you so much. I'm so fuckin' sorry, baby. I just get so fuckin' angry, and I—"

A shudder wracked his body and he twisted his fingers through the back of Casper's hair, pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. His heat was like an inferno, burning away all the bad until you pulled back and found your skin blistered and charred.

And it was too much right now. Casper pushed at Jack's chest, but his solid bulk didn't give. Oppressive. Too strong.

"Jack, get off."

"Come on, baby—"

His words burst out in a shriek. " _Jack stop fucking touching me!_ "

Casper wrenched himself out of Jack's arms. His skin fucking crawled and Jack's fucking stupid forlorn, gutter-wretch expression turned his stomach. Shit. _Shit._ Why did he always come back?

"Cassie? What did I do?"

"Nothing." _And that's just the problem._ "I just don't want anyone to touch me right now."

"Shit." Jack turned away. Twisted lips, fingers wrenching at the roots of his hair. All the self-loathing guilt. "I know, baby. Came lookin' for you at work and ... y'know." Jack nodded at the bedroom. Like it said everything. It did. "Heard."

"I'm surprised you're not too disgusted to touch me then."

That went through Jack like the knife Casper had meant it as. Fresh tears spilt from his eyes as he turned and paced over to the kitchen. A whiskey bottle, open with about a hundred mil off the top, sat on the side, but Jack didn't pick it up. That meant he was serious.

A bottle of whiskey was like Jack's comfort blanket, and the smooth burn down his throat was a mother's hands in his hair while he cried. One that actually loved him.

But he didn't go for it, and that meant he wanted to stay kind. Be _Jack_ for once. It wasn't fair that that was something special.

Jack's aimless wander ended leant against the counter, just out of reach of the bottle. The fingers in his hair looked as if they tore it out in clumps by the roots, but his voice really showed the whip of self-loathing falling on his back. "You know it ain't like that, baby."

Casper shrugged and pulled his hoodie off over his head. Because it was like that. It made it different. Always did. "I don't know. You don't think I fucking do this because I like it, Jack? I do it for the same fucking reason you fuck people up for a living. First time you fucked me you paid me, so you don't get to bitch me out because of it. Or—" a bitter laugh rasped up Casper's throat and he threw the scrunched-up hoodie on the sofa— "hey, at least you were meant to. We'll call it third time being a decent fucking human being, right?"

Jack's shoulders sagged under the lash of Casper's tongue, his head falling forward. "I know." He did know. They both knew. It was a well-worn path.

"You get to bitch me out over it when you decide your dick's done getting wet anywhere but here, and we both know that's not going to be for a long fucking time. I told you nothing emotional, Jack, and for me, that's getting fucking paid for it. Take it or fucking leave it."

"I know, baby. Just—" he sighed, scratching his fingers in the sides of his hair— "I just hate thinking of you like that. I know you hate it, baby. I know you only do it for money, and I just wish you'd let me take care of you, baby."

"And you know I look after myself, Jack."

Never again. He'd fallen for that once, hadn't he? Moved in with him and maybe it was the best half year of his life right up until Jack lost it over Casper getting a job in a club he'd gotten barred from. Jack had only been barred from it because it was a nice place, so Casper hadn't wanted to quit. Hadn't seen what the damn problem was because he hadn't even realised Jack would think he was doing anything but bar work there.

They were both too fucking stubborn when it came down to it, and Casper and his duffel bag of stuff had wound up running down the stairs followed by Jack's drunken vitriol with no place else to go.

That had been a bad two months. The beginning of the end. Back then, he'd been a mess when Jack broke up with him and he didn't have a head to get himself on his feet. Back then, he hadn't had these scars gnarling through his cheek and quite the same stains on his bones and there'd been a shred of hope that _maybe_ he could change. Jack had never really forgiven himself for what had happened to Casper out there and things had never quite been the same.

Probably because Casper had never quite trusted him since.

Jack sighed, his hand running out across the counter and his fingers stretching for the touch of cold glass. "Sure. Look—" He drew his hand back and straightened up, digging into his pocket. "Y'know I sure know I don't deserve you back again, baby, but I wanted to—Y'know, came 'round lookin' to make it right and all. Brought you this." The notes he pulled from his wallet rustled, a wad of greens. "For 'til you get your job back. Don't want you havin' to do what you gotta do, y'know. No strings, baby, just—" Jack flashed it and dropped it on the counter— "want you to be alright. I love you, Cas. I gotta know you're alright."

Too little too fucking late.

A swell lifted in his chest, a foul, toxic miasma that polluted his lungs and strangled his heart, and he turned away, fingers digging into his wrist. Look how easy that had been. Jack made good money when he didn't blow it all on drugs and booze and gambling and women, and that had to be half as much as Casper had made these two weeks. All he'd needed to get by.

Shit.

Casper fell onto the sofa and pulled his knees up to his chest, put his head between them. That fucking easy. Anyone else he wouldn't take it from but ... Jack really meant it when he said no strings. In all his foulness, he never held a single thing he gave against Casper no matter that Casper couldn't ever really give anything back.

"Hey..." Jack's heavy footsteps crossed the room. "Cassie? What's up, baby?" The sofa creaked as he settled on the arm, and Jack's fingers brushed rough and calloused behind his ear. Cain's touch had been so much softer, and wasn't it funny how he knew just the spot that Casper liked so much?

Cain. _Nothing emotional, was it, Roach?_ Well Jack had already fucking left him, hadn't he? All bets off, and he never needed to know.

The poison twisted deeper, right through his gut with an abruptly sharp wrench. Cain was back in two days. Casper had his job back in two days. It had all seemed like a light at the end of this black tunnel, the brightest one he'd ever known. All iridescent white rays refracting wondrous kaleidoscopes through the gloom.

"It's already done, Jack. I don't need it. Last day. Got my fucking job back Saturday."

"Awh _shit,_ baby." Hot, strong hands slipped around Casper's waist, pulling him up onto Jack's lap as Jack slid down beside him. Arms that held him close and hands rubbing over his back. "Fuck, baby, I'm so fucking sorry. I'm—" choked, broken off— "I'm so sorry. I should've come earlier. I—"

"I feel so fucking filthy. I'm—I'm just fucking—"

Jack hushed him, pulling Casper's legs around his waist and standing them both up from the sofa. "Come on, baby. Let's get you in the shower, huh? Jack's gonna look after you, baby. I swear I'm never gonna let you down again."

And he meant it. He always meant it, but they were both just snarled-up tangles of issues and it always, always came crashing down. But Jack knew his. Jack knew the film of filth covering his skin and he loved it. Jack knew all the mess he was and took him so long as his own mess didn't fuck it all up, and maybe that was all Casper ever deserved.

Just a shame he didn't love him anymore. That the only person who'd take him scared him more than he made him feel safe. Casper could never trust Jack, and Jack could never look at him without seeing his own failures and the foul way he treated the world reflected back in his face.

Jack remembered the nuances of why Casper was fucked up until he started drinking, and Casper bothered to push off his roving hands until his next hit. When he woke up in the middle of the night with the usual slow, whole-body ache, he ran to the toilet and threw up. Roaches crawled over his skin but his mind was too numb to work the shower so he sat in the tub shivering, naked, fresh and old bruises from the week painting his skin shades of grey in the dim light. He shuddered until Jack came and found him and carried him, stumbling, back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A proper appearance by Jack, finally! What do you guys think of him?
> 
> I'm excited to post the next few chapters because things are going to take a turn (hopefully anyone reading actually LIKES that turn but hey, we'll get there).
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading <3


	11. False Starts

Come the morning, Jack left to get them both breakfast and as soon as he left, Casper went out to the balcony swaddled in blankets with a cigarette and his phone. For a long time, he stared at Cain’s number on the screen. His hand shook as he lifted the cigarette to his lips, and he’d finished it by the time he worked up the courage to press call.

The least he could do was not ghost the guy. And in reality, this was the kindest thing he could do too. He was a sickness, and the only thing that he’d never disappoint was someone just as broken as he was.

It rung twice before he answered. Shit. Why couldn’t away mean no access to his fucking phone? A loud crackle ground out the speaker and grimacing, Casper held it away from his ear.

“Casper?” Distinctly his smooth, English lilt, even if it came just as broken up as the rest of the sound. “Sorry, I’m in the middle of a bloody desert. Bit hard to talk. Are you alright?”

Casper squeezed his eyes closed and tipped his head back against the window. A deep ache burst into being in his chest. “I—I—” _Just say it, Roach Boy. Don’t be a pussy._ But it was so fucking hard to make the words come out of his mouth.

He could feel the way Cain had held him like he sat beside him on the cramped space of the balcony right now. Hear the whisper in his ear.

_Remember me like this._

“Cas?”

_He’s so lovely, mum. He—he keeps making me laugh. He looks at me like I’m the most beautiful thing in the world._

“Cassie? Is everything alright?”

Fresh howling crackled through the speaker and the harsh sound startled him to words, a jumbled mess. “My—My boyfriend came ‘round yesterday, and like … not my ex anymore. I just—” Casper took a shuddering breath, pressed his forehead against his knees— “just wanted to tell you I won’t be c—coming on that date anymore.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

A low, indistinct hiss. The ache sunk down, twisting up in his stomach. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _fair_. Even as his hand reached out the end of the tunnel into that ethereal light, rubble came crashing down and blocked him off in darkness. But he’d promised Jack nothing emotional, and this … it was so far past emotional it terrified him.

“Cain?”

Silence. Casper swallowed hard and carried on regardless. Someone had stepped out onto the balcony opposite, a bulky man with a thick beard and a wifebeater, and he leant over the railing with a cigarette puffing between his lips.

“Thank you. For that night. It was … it was probably the best night of my life. At least for a long … long time. No one’s ever treated me like you have so … so thank you. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” So quiet that Casper had to press the phone back to his ear and grit his teeth against the metallic crackle to hear him. “It’s stupid, I’m sorry. You barely know me, Cas, I can’t expect you to drop him for me.”

So gentle, but the keen it raised in his chest came sharp as a knife. “I’m sorry anyway.”

“Don’t be. Look, Cas, keep my number. Please. Not for another date, but if you ever need _anything –_ a lift, money, food, just—just someone to talk to – if you need anything, please just ring me.”

“Cain…”

“Please, Cas. I’d be happy to hear from you, and I promise I won’t push my luck. I’ll always be at the end of the phone, so just call.”

Casper wouldn’t, and even if he did, those promises would be hollow at the core, but it was nice to have a reason to keep that number saved in his phone. Next time he got high or drunk alone, he could stare at it for hours and wonder if he should call.

“Okay. I’m—I’m gonna go now. Jack’s going to be back soon…”

“Alright, love.” _Love_? Casper squeezed his eyes closed against the skip of his heart. “I’ve really never met anyone like you, Cas. You’re special. Remember that.”

_Remember me like this._

How could Casper ever forget?

Casper killed the call. His phone tumbled from his slack fingers to the concrete, a sound like shattering as it hit the floor. The blankets over his head shut out the thin morning light, and in that cocoon, Casper shook.

All the motions of crying, but the tears just wouldn’t come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one comes in a tad short, but packed full of the feels. 
> 
> Like come on Cassie bby, just leave your bf - Cain's way better ... probably
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading, and remember, I'd always love to hear from you!


	12. Cold Breath of the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Suicide ideation & implied/referenced rape

The wind howled through the night and the bridge beneath Casper’s feet trembled under its force.

It was the only real thing in this concrete hell, the wind. Fuck all these marks of man, all the shields against its fury, it took the channels built as a statement of the blessed order of mankind and turned them to megaphones for its tirade against the world. Here on this bridge above the highway, it buffeted his face in screaming gusts and it came so fast, so quick, so storming that it left behind all the stink of pollution and filled his lungs with the bright taste of nature. Petrichor, the scent of the earth after it rained.

That taste was the only reason he still stood on the right side of the rail.

Night off work, tonight, and right at the beginning, he’d had a call. _Five grand_ , that wheezing voice had said, _five grand for the night and anything we like._

Casper asked how they’d gotten his number. The profile had come straight down after his last day and he saved every number that called him. _#One, #Two, #Three,_ on and on. Capped out at _#FortyIh8myself._

They said they’d saved it for a special occasion and reiterated the offer. No kids. No animals. No mutilation, surgical play, or dismemberment. Anything else goes.

Five thousand. Casper had tried to remember the taste of shit and after a second, asked for the address.

Now the wind screamed for him.

Was it the cold that made his whole body shudder? It bit so vicious. Bitter ice. Freight trucks thundered down the highway, swaying in the gale, and the odd car with bright headlights dodged between them.

All those lives like suspended murk in the ocean.

Two hours ago, he’d stumbled out of the apartment. Bloody. Bruised. Sick. Sick. Sick. So fucking sick it took every fibre of himself not to just keep walking, stumble out into the road and lie down and die. He’d rung Jack. Incoherent. Jack tore him out for being stupid and a whore and turning tricks again when he swore not to and told him he was done before hanging up.

Sick.

If he tore off his skin, nothing but putrid slime would coat his bones.

His feet carried him blind along those quiet city streets. No one seemed to blink at the blood crusted under his nose and the black eye swelling closed and the split lip. Casper didn’t. Every injury scoured off another bit of his scum-slick skin.

He could still feel his fingers. _Him._

Cain answered on the second ring.

_Casper?_

Cain Cain I—I need some help

_Cas, where are you?_

That bridge do you remember that bridge the one we walked back along I’m on that bridge Cain I really need some help

_Fifteen minutes, Cas. Wait for me, alright, don’t—_

The phone plummeted from his boneless fingers, the light from the screen like a falling star. It smashed against the tarmac the moment before a lorry smeared it across the road.

Would his body smear out red or brown? Grey brain matter slick on the tarmac studded with skull shards like precious gems. The driver screaming to a halt and throwing up as he staggered from the cab. Hard-faced police officers marking off the muddy streak and shaking their heads that one body could contain such filth. Jack’s slow realisation that Casper wouldn’t be there next time he let go of his anger enough to make things right.

Didn’t it sound delightful?

Casper. Gone. No memory. No filth staining his skin. Free.

For the first time in his life, he’d finally be able to snatch up some control in his blind grasping hands.

_Hand over his mouth. Rope scorching his skin. Something so big it tore him in—_

Casper slammed his head against the railing and screamed.

\-- _in two. The bang bang bang bang of that headboard against the wall. Count it down roach boy count it down five hundred to zero._

“Five hundred,” Casper whispered, staring down at the headlights whizzing past. “Four ninety-nine…”

Someone settled against the railing beside him at one-ten, and the count died on his lips. Shouldn’t there have been footsteps? The only sound had been the rattle of the railing and a fresh buffet against the wind. Cain wore a coat this time, a long one that billowed behind him in the gale, and his features looked broken in two as his eyes traced over Casper’s face.

His mess reflected right back at him. Something choked in his throat as he turned away.

“You came?”

“Of course I came.” So gentle, but it cut above the wind as if it weren’t there. “I promised I’d come any time you needed me.”

“Why?”

“That’s a … very long story, Cas. A very long story indeed. One day, if you want to hear, I’ll tell you.”

“You’d better tell me now.” Hung over the railing, he pointed his finger to the vertiginous floor. “I’m going down there. As soon as I reach zero.”

Cain straightened from his lounge on the rail. “How far are you from zero?”

“I don’t know. I lost count when you came.”

“Well, I’d better stay then. To ensure the count stays lost.”

And that was why Casper had called him, he supposed. So he didn’t reach zero. A shudder wracked him, and he twisted his fingers through his hair. It was so cold. So cold. He’d left behind his hat and his coat and his other hoodie.

“Cas, love? Is it alright if I give you a hug?”

It was. Somehow, it was. Casper still dreamt of how he’d felt in his arms, that gentle security. Where Jack’s touch burnt away the bad bits, Cain’s just washed them away.

But— “You don’t want to touch me. I’m—” Casper shuddered, ragged moan. “I’m filthy. My—God, my skin, it’s fucking—it’s vile. I’m fucking vile.”

Cain sunk in low beside him again. Behind that wavering smile, everything else crumbled away. His head tilted and his arm stretched past Casper to straighten up his hood, even if the wind whipped it askew again. “I’m asking if I’m allowed to, Cas. If you’re happy for me to.”

Numb, Casper nodded.

Some strength filled the smile. “Do you want my coat first? You look cold?”

Casper nodded.

The same white shirt and black slacks rippled in the howling wind and the coat he held out billowed like a sail. Cain eased Casper’s arms into it, too big by far bunching up by his hands and trailing on the floor, and he pulled it close and snug around his front. He tugged Casper’s hood up as well, a breath of cold on the tips of his fingers as he pulled it in place, and somehow it stayed there, ignorant of the wind.

“Better?”

Casper nodded.

The coat smelt fresh. Vanilla and paper and fallen pine needles scattered across a forest floor. Just like Cain’s wrists as they brushed close to his face, hands pushing his ragged hair back beneath the hood, smelt of bitter cold and the first touch of snow. All the warmth of him lived in his dopey smile and awestruck eyes, and in the soft passion in every touch that graced Casper’s skin.

“Still want a hug?”

Casper nodded. Then he cleared the scratch of his throat. “Like—” Casper turned from Cain and his face that broke his stupid heart to look out at the highway stretching between tower blocks and the neon lights on the horizon. “Like this? I don’t want—I need to—to have something to look at.”

And as much as Cain felt safe, he couldn’t bear the claustrophobia of having his face pressed into someone’s chest.

“Of course.” Just a breath, clear through the wind like he whispered in Casper’s ear. Even with all the bulk of this over-sized coat, Cain settled in behind him tall enough to make him feel small. His arms closed around Casper, one low around his waist and the other beneath his arms, holding him tight and close against his solid chest. His chin rested on top of Casper’s head, then the idea of his lips, and then his cheek. “Is this okay?”

A whimper guttered in Casper’s raw throat. “It’s perfect.”

He felt the way that gasped breath tightened through Cain’s stomach against his back. His cheek pressed in against Casper’s head and almost imperceptibly, he rubbed it against the hood. Did he feel the way Casper shook in his arms? Had the filth oozing off his body yet soaked through his clothes and into Cain’s skin? Two lorries hammered down the road fast enough to shake the bridge, a low speed drag race to nowhere.

“If you want to talk, Cas, I’m listening, but if you don’t, I’m right here anyway, alright?”

It could have been hours before the words began to dribble from his lips, a confession as if it might rip out this toxic parasite latched into the core of his brain. However long it took, Cain waited. As he talked, he stayed silent and patient as the world spun by around them.

“Someone rang me earlier. Wheezy voice, kinda like me if I was a mouth-breather. Sounded like a massive creep. Five. Five grand, no questions asked. I do a lot of fucked up shit for a lot less so—so I—I went. I guess it’s not anything to you, but five … even one would—it’d be good. It’d be really, really good. Thought it’d be some fucking weird shit, might even be like—like proper fucked sadistic shit but—but y’know, I’m a fucked up little junkie slut and I kinda like most of that shit anyway so I took some dope with me and got revved up for it anyway. Like fuck it, if it’s five k I’ll treat it like I organised it in the first place.

“G-Got there. Nice place. L-Little house, getting a bit suburb-y. Guy said come—come round the—the back way. Y’know, who wants a freak like me knocking on the door where the neighbours can see, right? I—I knocked and—and—h-he—he— D-D—” _Fuck, gonna be fucking sick._ Casper hunched over in Cain’s arms and Cain gave him the space, even edged round to the side to hold him like that instead, as he clasped the railing and retched. Dry. Just like his eyes. Why couldn’t he just fucking cry?

Because corpses didn’t have functional tear ducts. _Cue the fucking laugh track, roach._ Shuddering, Casper wiped away the spit hanging from his lip and pressed his forehead against the railing.

“I just fucking ran,” he croaked. “B—But the gate—one of them tall ass solid wood ones. S—His friend, he’d locked it. Cou—Couldn’t climb it. I mean probably could but before I got a chance there—Like a fucking horror movie right, pounding footsteps and then something smashes over the back of my head. I mean not like a movie, ‘cause I only went down for a sec, but D—he—he’s already—he’s fucking got me arms up behind me and—and something st—stuffed in my mouth and a—a gun—”

Casper pressed his fingers up into the fleshy space beneath his chin, shivering, and now Cain held him tighter, still around the side with his forehead pressed against the side of Casper’s head and his breaths harsh, panting in his ear. Almost sounded like the guy was crying. At least someone could cry for the cockroach squished beneath fate’s stinking boot.

“Wish I’d fucking made him shoot me but I’m—I’m so dizzy. Then—then I’m in and it’s all fucking over.

“They let me go once—once th—they were d—done. He knows I’ll never say shit so what’s the fucking harm. I rang Jack and he just— _fuck—”_ Some noise like a sob choked up his throat. The metal shuddered against his forehead, bridge trembling in the wind, as he ground his skull against it. “Cunt didn’t even _listen_. Just—just went off and I’m standing there on the side of the street wanting to s—smash my head against the fucking floor ‘til I break it just—just listening to him fucking go in on me and then he _broke up with me._ And—and now I’m standing here instead—and I’m counting—I’m counting like I used to count and when I hit zero it’s all over, except this time I won’t have to keep doing the last hundred over and over ‘til it’s zero ‘cause _I’m_ in control. It’s my fucking skin and I bet if one of those lorries hits me it’ll finally scrape all this fucking _filth_ off. I just want to tear it all fucking _off._ I’m so fucking filthy and it’s—it’s in my gut and my lungs right down to my fucking bones and I just—I just want—”

 _It’s our little secret, Cassie. Now be a good boy and put this in your mouth._ And the wadded up underwear tasted of sweat and shit and his own fucking fear just the same. No matter how used up he was, it still hurt like it was going to tear it apart. He still fucking deserved every single bit of it and there was no light at the end of the tunnel that wouldn’t burn off his fucking skin.

“I want to run away. I don’t want to live anymore. I just want it all to go away.”

The devil whispered in his ear, black chocolate sin and the weight of his own trembling in his voice. It caressed his lips and his throat and ran smooth long fingers all the way down his quivering stomach to close around his—

“I can take you away, Casper. You told me once, love, that you wished I’d just stolen you away the moment I laid eyes on you and I failed you then, but this time I won’t. This time I can make sure no one ever hurts you again.”

Ice crawled down Casper’s spine, a slow glacier calving off and the shock of cold bursting through his whole body. Heart pounding, he twisted around in Cain’s arms, and his perfect stranger’s fingers settled freezing against his face. The elegant legs of a spider crafted from snow digging into his jaw and pulling him close for the venomous kiss.

Some part of him was still torn between the two worlds he offered on his palms before everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big sad for cassie :(
> 
> .... also big ominous, yikes


	13. Nightmare

Wakefulness crept slow into Casper's mind, but it was an awakening like a dream, his body cradled on a cloud and the scent of dreamy incense and pine enveloped him. Quiet, blissful quiet. These candyfloss pillows swallowing his head, and these sheets... Sighing, Casper rubbed his cheek against the silk and buried his face in the thick covers. The slow smile hurt his cheeks. A deep ache overlaid by sharp stings. In fact, his whole body ached, hunched like a hunk of scrap in this feather-stuffed dream. Strange, but no matter. Especially not here.

Wherever ... here was.

This wasn't his bed.

Tension shot through his limbs and Casper's breath shuddered out of him. _Don't fucking move an inch, Roach Boy._ His muscles quivered. Right down to his ears straining out like a goddamn elephant's, fondling the air for a _hint._ One little tip that said, _yeah, Roach, don't worry you're supposed to be here._ He wasn't supposed to be here.

The quiet didn't sound quite so empty anymore. His own sharp, quick breaths and the blood pounding in his ears. Behind that, some soft bird call, the hum of pipes and distant wind.

Breathing. That wasn't only his breathing. Slower, deeper. Someone else sat _right there_ , an arm's length away.

Cain.

Fresh ice pooled in Casper's gut and slow, as if he were still asleep, he pulled the covers further over his head.

"I know you're awake, Cas."

 _Oh my god, this isn't fucking happening._ This whole fucking night. This was a nightmare. Casper pressed his hands to his mouth. His lungs heaved for air, but his head still rolled, edging black like these oppressive sheets were the plastic bag pulled over his head. _There's no way this is fucking real._ What if he'd just passed out? Imagined those chilling words whispered in his ear.

A long, slow sigh from beside him. "I suppose I've no right to expect you to actually want to look at me now..."

Alright, so it was real. Shit. And this fucking psycho was talking to him all calm like he hadn't just fucking kidnapped him. Fuck. _Breathe, Roach. Fucking breathe._ Jesus fucking Christ. This seriously could not be happening. How had he not seen this guy was a fucking _nut_?

Oh _god,_ he'd dropped his phone off the fucking bridge.

Did he have clothes on? T-shirt and jeans by the feel. At least the psycho hadn't fucking stripped him. How about... No. _They'd_ found it. Taken it and put it to better use. Casper's gorge rose and shuddering, he curled deeper beneath the covers.

This was a nightmare.

A dry sob burst past his clutching hand.

This was a fucking nightmare.

Wood creaked beside him, the rustling of cloth. "Cas—"

Fingers brushed against his hair. Just a tickle, but Casper broke. Twisted away and scrambled across the bed. The covers strangled his legs like clutching hands, and in that panic, a shriek tore from his throat.

" _DON'T TOUCH ME_!"

Cain fell back in his chair with a clunk, hands held up by his head and a deep grimace on his lips. The chair was some big heavy behemoth frowning at Casper around nutjob's shoulders. It sat right beside the bed, and behind him, a vast window poured the orange-tinted sunset across the room, drenching the side of Cain's face in a tangerine dream.

Somehow, he still looked like that perfect stranger, not a fucking psycho nutjob, and everything about him was still so calming and soft that Casper gagged with the shuddering, rotten _cold_ flooding his body. His breath came hard and fast, and he made himself look around the room, because _this couldn't be happening_ and maybe he'd find the mark of a dream.

Too nice. That was the dream here. Understated minimalism and elegance. This huge four-poster bed and the wide wardrobe set into the slope of the roof opposite him, a mirror reflecting his own sallow, terrified face back at him. All airy space and duck egg walls and polished beech slipping beneath a dusky blue rug and—

Door.

Casper bolted. A curse behind him, clatter of the chair. He didn't stop. The rug skidded beneath his pounding feet and he fell into the door. Palms slapped against solid wood and the knob—

Didn't fucking turn.

Screaming, he yanked at it. Slammed his shoulder into the door. Locked. Fuck. _Fuck_. Casper sobbed and pulled and fucking pulled and—

A hand closed on his shoulder and Casper spun, fist flying out. Pain shot through his knuckles and Cain staggered back, hand clasped to his cheek. Casper sprinted past him. Window. That fucking window. He jumped up onto the bed and bounded across. The sheets slipped beneath his feet, heart lurched. Wild hands closed on the post and he swung himself off. That chair weighed a tonne, solid wood and Casper grabbed the back and smashed the window.

It bounced off. No breaking glass. No shattering. Just a thud and a rebound that nearly took him off his feet.

Shit _._

One big pane that didn't open and beneath it, a three story drop to a bone-crunching death.

And for as far as he could see, stretching out to where the scorching brightness of the sun touched the horizon, nothing but fields and forest and miles and untouched miles of sumptuous green. Breathtaking and beautiful and everything he'd dreamed of waking up to see for years.

_Shit._

"It's not going to break, Cas, and the best you'll do jumping out is break your legs."

 _Play it cool, Roach Boy. Psycho's gotta unlock that door sometime._ Shudders wracked Casper's body, but he couldn't make himself budge. Couldn't tear his eyes from sweet promise of death plunging down beneath him and couldn't make himself drop the chair nor spin around and smash Cain in the face with it.

 _God_ , he wanted to smash his face in. Shatter that breathtaking smile and gouge out his gentle eyes. That was the real face of the monster. The one that made everything alright.

Because it wasn't alright.

Casper's knees gave out. Solid wood bruised his ass and the impact sent a lance of agony up his spine from _that._ The beginning of this nightmare. And with Cain there he thought he'd finally started waking up but that _cunt_ had just dragged him deeper. His breath caught. Then again, deeper. Iron bars closed around his chest and the air came thin, too heady light. Casper put his head between his knees and twisted his fingers through his hair and sobbed.

Why hadn't he just jumped? _Three two one fucking zero no more roach no more nightmare no more life._ What was the point running just to go back to dealing with that fucking trauma and the same tango with Jack and the day in day out music pounding through his head while he served drinks to scum, go home ignore the ringing in your ears, shoot _up up up_ just until he came plummeting back down.

He couldn't do it anymore.

_Breathe, Roach, deep breaths deep breaths._

Yeah like fuck. His lungs shuddered like an engine turning over.

Another sigh echoed through the silence of the room followed by the mumble of weight settling on the bed behind him. Casper twitched, but when Cain spoke, it stayed distant.

"I'm sorry, Cas."

"Fuck you."

"I'm not trying to hurt you or anything like that, I swear."

"Fuck off."

"You said you wanted to run away, Cas. I've taken you away."

Laughter sputtered up his throat, a shock out of his ragged breathing. Casper scrambled up to his feet with the chair solidly in front of him, and he gaped at Cain lounged out all elegant and hard fucking done by on the other side of the bed. He _had_ to be kidding. Fucking hell. "I didn't fucking mean this! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Cain's grimace deepened and with a sigh, he tipped his head back, rubbing at the cheek Casper had punched. The orange light from the window burnished his skin golden and Casper's fingers itched to rip it off. Both of them flayed together with putrid foulness oozing from their exposed flesh. Wouldn't that be a sight to behold?

"Yes," Cain spoke quietly, almost as if to himself and the more he said, the worse this chill shivering through his body got. Ragdoll Roach Boy plunged right beneath the ice and swallowed whole. "Well," he continued, a tartness edging into his voice as he talked, "I'd been weighing it up anyway and I suppose you saying that decided it for me. I just ... maybe I'll have cocked up this go around, but I couldn't be without you, Cas, not with you hurting like that."

Casper laughed, dragging his hands back through his hair and shaking his head. God, it just got worse and worse. "You've met me twice! _Twice_ , you fucking nut! You're _absolutely_ fucking crazy! Oh my god. Oh my god."

His feet carried him up and down past the window, and if he stood still, he was gonna fucking scream. And Cain just fucking _lay_ there with his fingers pinched over the bridge of his nose like Casper was kicking a fuss up over _fuck all._

"This is a nightmare." The words croaked past Casper's chapped, swollen lips. "You're absolutely fucking crazy. Of course you're crazy! What sort of fucking person acts like you did with the weird fucking ghoul bartender from the sleaziest joint in fucking town! Oh my god, I'm literally in a fucking horror movie. Oh my—"

Sharp, Cain's voice cut across the sounds of his mind unravelling. "Yes, well, the last one was so bloody _crap_ forgive me if I needed some bloody fucking comfort this time!"

"What are you _fucking_ talking about?" Casper screamed. "What the _fuck_ are you talking about? _You_ need some comfort? You've literally just _fucking_ kidnapped me! Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. What now then, you fucking creep? You got your little fucking rat in its cage. Gonna keep me pretty, is it? It puts the lotion on its fucking skin, or it gets—the _fucking—HOSE! FUCK!_ "

A sob burst from his lips and Casper collapsed to his knees again. The wood cracked through them and again, that same pain lanced from his ass up his spine. Casper's stomach rolled and he nearly threw up. "I can't believe this is happening. I—I actually—oh my god, I actually thought you cared. You were so nice to me. I actually thought someone cared."

"Casper..." Back to that world-weary sigh. The sound of it crawled down Casper's spine like huge, ponderous frost-spiders. Foul. "I do care, Cas. All of this is because I care so, _so_ much about you."

"Fuck off."

A long silence spread between them and Casper shivered on the floor, clutching his head and holding back the panicked sobs threatening in his heaving lungs. The sun had slipped past the long, wavering line of the horizon and just like that, the warmth had vanished from the light.

Eventually, with what felt like one last sigh, the bed creaked and Cain's shoes tapped against the floor. Casper didn't look up. Was this where he gave up and killed him? Was this where he grabbed him by his hair and had his way? Surely that was how this obsessive shit went. Rape, convincing yourself they wanted it. Fuck, it felt like he was still fucking bleeding. If Cain laid one hand on him like that he'd bite through his own tongue.

That's why it had always been the boxers stuffed in his mouth. _He_ knew Casper would do it if he gave him the chance. Cain didn't.

"I suppose I'll leave you alone then. I've left some food on the table, and there's a bathroom through the other door... Have a shower, love. Use as much water as you like."

A sick hysteria bubbled up Casper's throat. "Oh, I couldn't _possibly_ use up your hot water after you've given me such a lovely place to stay, you fucking nut."

Never mind on that one last sigh thing. This guy sure could fucking pull them out. "I really am sorry, Cas. I'll let you in the rest of the house once you've settled in a bit. There's ... There's a garden too. You'll like that."

"Yeah I really like chasing birds with the leash on. Why don't you just fuck off already?"

"Alright... Goodnight then, Casper."

His footsteps clicked across the floor and a moment after they stopped, a lock clunked. Not an ounce of anything existed to drive him to his feet to struggle and fail to escape.

But enough was there to stir his tongue as the door opened. "I hope you die. And I hope it's slow and I hope you cry."

"Me too, love, if only it would mean an end to all this."

The door shut and the lock turned. Outside, the sun had set, and the moon hung fat and pale in the dimming sky. The first star sparkled on the velvet black, already brighter than any that Casper had ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I attempt to write a little action and Casper swears a lot. Hope you all like the new turn to the story!
> 
> I think I'll take a moment in this author's note to put a disclaimer out for the rest of the series, which I should hope is clear enough in that this is a work of fiction:
> 
> I do NOT condone any and all actions or reactions of the characters from this point (or before for that matter) - Casper and Cain both - and I write them from a standpoint of both of them being very broken, and perhaps already very strange people. The reasonings behind Cain's actions will become clear, and Casper I've always viewed as a gritty survivor, someone very capable of surviving if not thriving in situations a lot worse than this one.


	14. Count to Zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Suicide, drug abuse

He didn’t move for the rest of the night, and he must have fallen to sleep, because when he blinked, he opened his eyes to find the sun had begun to rise. A blanket covered him and a pillow shielded his head from the floor. The sky gasped a coral blush, sunrise casting long, wallowing shadows across the landscape, and in the gloomy pockets between the hills, mist rolled like clouds gliding across the land.

It was so beautiful he wanted to cry.

Instead, he got up, shedding these false marks of Cain’s care. Legs like twin jackhammers, but he got them balanced. Just. The need had set in deep now, an ache through his bones as if he’d been walking for a hundred thousand years. His hands almost slipped from the chair as he lifted it, slick with sweat, and the way the perspiration trickled down his spine felt as if slugs crawled over his skin. Not that it was just the sweat. Every inch of his flesh felt toxic.

How could he have believed anyone could look at him like that unless they were even more fucked than he was?

Casper screamed as he slammed the chair into the mirror. Only way he could fucking lift it and he howled again, legs giving, when the chair bounced straight off.

What the fuck was this place?

 _Fuck,_ he couldn’t even smash the mirror to slit his own wrists and from inside that mocking glass, his ghastly reflection laughed at him. Teeth like knives, eyes the black spiral pits of the ghoul. Its face ran sallow white to his murky olive and its sweat glistened like diamond dew in the morning light.

The ghoul tapped its hip. Right over the front pocket.

“I don’t—” Casper shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. Each breath ached to take, laboured. It all hurt so much. The need and the memories. “I just want to die.”

Howling laughter from the ghoul, the sound like a rusty knife driven through his ear into his skull. One black eye shuttered off in a wink and it slipped its fingers into the pocket of its jeans.

Casper’s hand trembled as he dug into his pocket. His fingers met plastic and a sob burst from his lips. A baggy. Powdered fucking life still swilling round the bottom. More than swilling, _overflowing_ – the whole shebang he'd bought just for that _special_ occasion. Sweet, heavenly release. Enough to wring out for a few days.

Enough to be too much.

In the mirror, the ghoul cackled, its head thrown back.

Somehow, he could imagine Cain finding him. The moment frozen in the doorway as he stared at that vomit-soaked body on the bed. Too still. Even sleep wasn’t this still. Then the shout, the sprint across the room. Grabbing his face, but the heat that must burn so hot against his cold skin would already be gone, and the wrenching sob, uncaring of the filth as he held that lifeless wretch against his chest and raged at the injustice that _again_ he’d failed him.

“What was he talking about?” Casper croaked to the ghoul in the mirror, squeezing the baggy tight in his hand.

Tipping its head side to side, the ghoul swirled his fingers around his ears, slow and wandering as that creeping beginning of a carousel ride.

“I know he’s crazy, but—but—” Casper whet his lips—“he kept saying the same thing. What did he mean?”

No matter how dazzling the light that spilt across the mirror, it died in the pits of the ghoul’s eyes and its gaping maw. The scars on its cheek split open around its inimical grin, making three slashes of puckered black that oozed foul pus down its cheek.

Shaking its head, the ghoul pointed its finger at Casper, nail cracked and ragged with blood seeping from beneath the bed, then made the same funfair swirls around its head.

“Thanks,” Casper rasped. “I knew that one too.”

He took a shower first, scorching hot and he rubbed his skin raw. Each barely scabbed cut broke open and the blood swirled pink in the drain. The ghoul crouched on the counter watching him and licked its lips.

“Why won’t it come off?” Casper begged the ghoul, and the ghoul tilted its head one way, then the other, then its skin turned mottled brown and red with the handprints of filth and blood.

There was no hope. It’d never get better. Every time he closed his eyes, roaches crawled over his skin and the bed banged against the wall.

Sweat, stale and fresh, wafted off his clothes. Those dark stains on the t-shirt were mirrors of his skin. Casper left them lying on the floor and crouched naked before the mirror. A hunkered changeling, all protruding bone and gnarled, ruined skin. The ghoul was excited now. It paced back and forth in the mirror, its breath coming harsh and laboured and laden with the black spit drooling from the corner of its mouth.

Casper smiled at it and told it to be patient as he tapped the lines out on the polished beech floor.

And like the cretinous roach he was, he put his face to the wood to snort them up. One by one, big fat rails of brown powder that turned his nose numb behind the sharp tang of vinegar raising on his tongue.

In the mirror the ghoul chattered and aped and whooped.

It was already starting to hit. Casper's legs wavered fuzzy beneath him as the distance to the bed stretched out like a tunnel, the light always dancing away from his clumsy grasping hands.

Everything was going to be okay.

The edge of the bed banged against his shin, but he didn’t feel it. Not really. He didn’t really feel anything now. Nothing but the cloud that cradled him in the arms of an angel. God reaching out to welcome him to death before those hands of searing light pushed him down to hell and the wide open arms of the devil.

The devil would speak with Cain's dark chocolate voice and kiss like bitter-sweet sin, and Casper would sit by his side in the hellfire while the devil ran his fingers through his hair.

“Five hundred,” Casper whispered to the ghoul squatting over his chest.

“Four ninety-nine,” the ghoul croaked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(


	15. Cerunnos

Death felt nice.

Crazy there actually was a _death_ , not just an empty meaningless life where animals bestowed the curse of consciousness trundled at the end of a souped-up chain towing the grand, groaning machine of society.

Oh, we all laugh at the ants and the futility of their labour, but the same as those tireless drones, our whole facade of existence did no more than fuel that hulking tower in black iron deemed _civilization_. In the face of the grandiosity of the cosmos, it was no more than the twig poking out the top of the anthill, our own pitiful footprint on creation.

Each heaving, bleeding, suffering step we staggered forward only heaved on the precious few that climbed with their blood-stained, gold-tipped fingers to lounge – for a measly few years – at the top. Revelled, iniquitous, in an emotional pauper's life of splendour before they too tumbled to the ground with all the rest to be crushed beneath the ruthless path of the engine of time.

Everyone died the same. Alone and rotting in the earth.

Then again, life remained just as meaningless as when death was the end. When it meant the last dull spark of a neuron in your flesh-sack – zip, that all important concept we call _life_ , the pattern of behaviour known as Roach come to the end of its run on the wheel.

Except now he'd just been shoved off onto another wheel, but at least this one was warm. This one smelt of vanilla and fresh snow and cradled his head in feathers. Some entity murmured to him, dulcet tones that soothed his weary spirit down to its bones.

Were those fingers in his hair?

How long until this got boring?

Was this heaven?

For now, he might as well just enjoy it. So much for the fires of hell; Casper curled up in feathers all aglow with the warmth of a summer day. One of those soft ones where everything glowed dreamy and buttercup yellow. If they were the devil's fingers, they felt so lovely against his scalp. His whole body lay too aching heavy to butt up against the touch, so he simply _basked_. Time would come to find if there were a way to claw out of this bliss. For now, _relax_.

Did he know that voice, the one that crooned indistinct in his ear? Shapes coloured that dark river whispering around him. Words. The shift of his focus came with the retreat of the amniotic heaven. Things ... hurt. Some trick of the mind imposing the physical upon the spirit, perhaps.

Singing. The devil crooned a song in his ear, one with the lilting tremble of a lullaby. Those noises shaped words, but the words were a dream themselves. Sounds like murky water, a language he'd never heard but that tune ... so hauntingly familiar.

Those fingers belonged to an arm, one that met a shoulder where Casper's head lay pillowed on a firm plane of muscle, cradled against a long, lithe body. The voice belonged to a mouth, and in the hazy glow as his eyes fluttered open – light crystallized between the feathered shield of his eyelashes – that mouth was a blur of soft pink against pure, creamy skin.

It was so warm. God, it was so, so blissfully warm that he never wanted to move. Casper squeezed his eyes closed again and some kittenish mewl slipped from his lips as he curled in against his devil. The song stopped, a gasp he felt through the chest beneath his head. Everything ached so deep in his bones, but the warmth soothed it. Strong arms enveloped him in the soft fires of hell, the one around his shoulders and another slipped around his waist to brush along his spine. A squeeze, something wet and choked in the unsteady lift of these ribs, and the arms, the body, it all drew away.

Casper twisted his fingers into the shirt. Shirt? Something twigged, but he didn't want to follow it. He didn't want anything but his devil's fingers in his hair and that lullaby cradling him in a feathered cloud. Devil in a shirt. Why was that so familiar?

A long, heavy sigh ached through those ribs. The sigh of some great ancient, Cerunnos in his glade as old as time, moss draped across grand, creaking antlers that twined toward the sky like the branches of a tree.

Cerunnos whose long, gentle fingers trailed over his skin as if it wasn't as gnarled and ruined as the old oak standing at the centre of his glade. Cerunnos whose touch lingered as if letting go would mean tearing that wooden heart from his chest.

No one had ever touched him like that. No one but ... Cain.

The vast tragedy laid bare across his face was writ as ancient and slow as the wandering steps of that primordial god. Creamy sunlight set his skin aglow and put vivid amber rays in his soft acorn eyes. For a moment, there was only him, the perfect stranger and perhaps the face he would have worn when Casper stumbled over a rejection over the phone, desert winds whipping through his hair.

For a moment.

But even after that moment, the fear lay buried beneath such a weight of depression and exhaustion that it could hardly twitch its needle-spined tail.

"Why?" Casper whispered.

So many facets of that question, but ... perhaps just one answer.

Another sigh lifted weary from Cain's very core. The tightness through his jaw and eyes wound in a notch, a winch on that sorrowful thread with which he stitched their fate. Still beneath the covers, Cain propped himself up on his elbow, head resting on his hand as if it bore the weight of the world.

"You're going to think I'm crazy."

Casper rubbed his cheek against the soft cotton sheets. His head was so heavy. Too heavy to lift. "I already think you're crazy."

A slight incline of Cain's head came in answer with a wry grimace that lifted a little of the tragedy from his face. He shifted and flinched back as his knee knocked against Casper's. Trousers, but that shirt sat rumpled and undone to mid-way down his chest, and his perfect hair didn't sit quite so perfect anymore, ruffled and stuck up on one side. Deep, bruised bags cradled his eyes and thin stubble shaded his marble-carved jaw.

Casper curled up – _come on, Roach, invertebrate or not get a fucking backbone_ – and lifted his foot until his bare toes brushed against Cain's ankle. Cain's gasp seemed to catch the sun, as if it should plume misty and bright in the air.

"Cas—"

"Tell me _why_." A petulant demand. "I want to know why."

_I need to know why you did all this but I woke up from nearly dying to you stroking my hair and singing to me._

Because he was fucking crazy, that was why.

One of those elegant hands rubbed over Cain's face, tugging at the smooth skin. "Alright," he said from behind the shield of his hand. "Can I ... I mean, do you want me to get out?"

Casper shook his head. Because apparently he was even more spineless than a fucking roach now. Nothing but a worm flopping about in the dirt. Hopefully that flicker of bright surprise meant he was getting his hopes up about this being shit but worm boy scraping together comfort from anywhere that offered it.

Let it disappoint him.

"Alright then," Cain said. "It's..." 

Cain took a deep breath, a stand of fortification, and he spoke with flayed, raw honesty tearing at the edge of his voice. "It's because I'm in love with you, Cas. Not just after I've met you twice, but I've ... I've loved you for lifetimes. Eleven now, to be exact. Ten times after I died, I ... I woke up again and every single time you were there too, out there somewhere, but you..."

Soft, Cain's fingers brushed through his hair, so loving and his trembling smile overflowed with wet, blue sorrow. "You never remember, love. Not once."

Oh _shit_. Casper rolled onto his back, his heart jerking in his chest and eyes squinting against the streaming sunlight. Made a strange bath to this black ominous goop gathering up in his gut. 

He was the really, _really_ crazy kind of crazy. The fucking _reincarnated lover_ kind of crazy.

What was at the end then? A knife through Casper's heart as he fucking cried over him before spotting another small, black-haired boy broken by the world to fixate on. What happened to the first one? Had that been real, or had it just been the first flash of obsession?

 _Shit_.

Bundled up in those sumptuous covers, the cotton an angel's kiss against his cheek, Casper drowned.

A slow drowning. Chained down as the tide came in and each susurrus wave lapped over your mouth and your nose, and filled your lungs with salt, and you choked and you choked but the next wash always came to fill up all you spluttered out. Asphyxiation even as you still gulped down fresh air.

The words tumbled from his lips, as rotten and lifeless as that scum-studded sea. "So much for fate."

Cain shifted beside him, the mattress dipping under Casper's back. "What?"

"You're something special," Casper slurred, tongue heavy in his mouth. "It's _fate_. You just fucking stalked me, you fucking psycho. Ten fucking times with ten different mes. Like fuck you've never met anyone like me."

" _What_?"

Cain sat up entirely now, pushing the cover down between them to block out the cool air that shivered over Casper's skin. Maybe nutjob was shocked Casper could give a fuck about something like that in a situation like this. Casper sure was, but right now it was the only thought that tolled around his head.

Something special. What a lie.

"Cas," Cain said with an air of desperation. "No, I meant that. It _is_ fate. Every time it's pure bloody _chance_. I never find you when I'm looking. I—I just _live_ and one day, I finally see you and—"

Some bitter imitation of a laugh choked up Casper's throat, cutting off Cain's words. "And the stars align? Fireworks go off up in the sky and I fall for you just like that?"

"No, not just like that. A lot of the time you can't bloody stand me, but just like this time we keep running into each other and sometimes I'm bloody fucking lucky enough that you start loving me back before—"

Casper bit out a laugh and twisted further away from him. Cold on this side, untouched by the warmth of his body. Hugging these covers against his chest was almost like holding his toy lion, the one that still lay chill and lonely on his bed. Thinking about him – about _home –_ a whimper slipped past his lips and then another as he realised Mackie would be the only one to miss him. Rent wasn't due for three weeks, and after this shitshow, Jack wouldn't be back in touch for at least two. Just his fucking toy lion with its threadbare coat and ratty mane.

"Fuck off," Casper said. "You're fucking crazy. You're just lucky I'm such an attention-starved roach or I would've seen straight through this shit. I suppose you pick the ones who're so fucked up they fall for it anyway. Wander around seedy bars 'till you spot your new Lolita and—" his voice cracked— "and you—you fucking smile at them like they're actually something fucking s—special."

Why did that hurt? How the _fuck_ did that have any right to hurt like some clawed his fucking heart out of his chest?

"Go fuck yourself, Cain. See a fucking therapist and let me go. Better yet, let me fucking die."

Cain's face crumpled with the poisonous words. The pretend – the continuous, delusional pretend – drowned him in nausea and bitter loathing. Everything _hurt._ It hurt so much and he was so, so tired and even this fucking fake psychosis was more care than anyone had ever given him and it wasn't _fair._ Shuddering, Casper rolled over away from Cain and dragged the soft bulk of the covers with him. Maybe if he pressed his face in deep enough, he wouldn't be able to breathe. Suffocate on the sweet scent of vanilla and pine.

"Why can't you just let me die?"

A muffled sob broke from Cain. "I can't, Cas. I can't let you go. I miss you too much. L—Last time, y—you—"

Was Cain crying? He kept it quiet past that broken voice if he was. Let him cry. Toast to the last boy Cain had ruined if he'd hurt this psycho that much.

Casper's leg twitched as he drew his knees right up to his chest, a spasm that shuddered right up his spine. Where was that bliss he'd woken in? That sleepy eternity had been closer to heaven than any he'd reached chasing the dragon at least since the first time he'd snatched at its tail, and that ... at least for the stretch of blissful ignorance until reality shattered him, that had been real.

 _Crawl back then, worm. Dredge up another reason to hate yourself._ At least he deserved this touch now. At least the hands that touched his skin were just as drenched in filth. It was so hard to think of a reason why not, and he was tired as the slow winter of death.

Those sun-drenched hills beyond the window were a glimpse of heaven just out of reach, but how wonderful to see them. In this light, the wet leaves of the forest glittered, breathtaking emeralds scattered across the green-gold silk of the patchwork hills.

Perhaps this was his hell. Here in this soft warmth curled up in the arms of the devil, just like he'd always dreamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casper's back, and he's in deep shit. The reincarnated lover kind of deep shit.
> 
> So what's the vote, crazy or not crazy? I mean what kind of guy kidnaps someone if they're not crazy.


	16. Slipping Skins

Shivering, Casper turned from the window. Back to Cain, who wiped away the tears drizzling down his cheeks while Casper nestled into the divot of himself still left in the mattress – his own shallow grave.

"You won't remember this," Cain murmured to him, his words heavy with the weight of deluded ages, "and I can't bear to be without you. Maybe I cocked it all up but I've done it now. At least ... at least nothing can hurt you here."

What had his words been as Casper stumbled out the front door that night? _I've found you now. I'll see you again soon._ Casper sniffed hard and some mucus dislodged from the top of his throat. Copper and vinegar. "Other than you."

"Other than me..."

Cain sighed and pulled his knees back up to his chest, the covers a tent across them and some unassailable urge to crawl into that space and nestle his head into Cain's lap gripped him tight in its maw. Casper's leg jerked, this misfiring nerve jolting through his back and down to his toes.

"I'm so bad at this, Cas. You'd think by now I'd have it down to a science, but I still mess it up all the time. I ... I thought you were asking me. I forget sometimes that I don't know this you yet."

The rasp of Casper's voice begged to be a tool of spite, and he wielded it now the way it'd always deserved. "Don't talk to me like we're friends."

"Of course..." Cain's head hung heavier against the cradling sling of his hands between his knees. A gloss of tears coated his dull eyes. "I'm sorry, Cas."

"I'd hate you if you weren't even more pathetic than I am."

A flinch ran through his shoulders, cringing, and a brush of pink darkened his cheeks. Cain flipped the cover back, drama queen making a sail of it that caught the air. Behind that pall, Casper hauled himself up. His back groaned, and he twisted around the twitch of his leg, brushing past the falling veil.

Casper didn't know why he did it. Only that some gnawing, ghoulish part of his mind demanded it. Cain's eyes went wide, a sharp gasp from his lips, as Casper grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

_Well done, Roach Boy, you've drilled straight past rock fucking bottom._

The stubble across Cain's jaw scraped his lips. Strong hands peeled away his grip and pushed him away. "Cas, don't—"

Casper twisted free of Cain's hands, stomach plunging. "Don't what?" Cold air bit his skin as he shrugged off the covers. The pout came to him easier than breathing right, same as the arch of his body into the hands he slid over his sides. Second nature. Cain's eyes devoured the sight of him, so why did he push him away? "Isn't this what you wanted?"

Was this foul worm not even deserving of the touch of his psycho stalker?

"For God's—" Cain dragged his hands over his face and back through his hair. The sunlight rippled through it, glossy cream. "I already didn't bloody sleep with you when you didn't think I was crazy. I certainly don't want to now."

No. Casper's hands fell into his lap like dead things and heat crept into his cheeks. Not even now. Even Psycho felt sick at the thought of his touch.

A palsied twitch jerked through one of his hands. Could you see the marks on his skin? Or was it just enough that Cain had finally seen those ridges down his arms and the slick, burns gnarled through his stomach? His shoulder blades stuck out like the stumps of ragged wings and his ribs pushed skeletal against the thin trap of skin.

Did he even still have all his teeth? The flash of his tongue across the back stuck on a hole – top right canine. Gone. When had he lost it? Which punch in the face? Had he deserved it? Had he punched back? Had he just fallen over too drunk and knocked it out?

A twitch again, hand then the leg curled beneath him. Casper twisted his hands into the sheets.

Tragedy stained Cain's face. Oh, and it looked so comfortable there. "Cas, I'm—"

A wordless hiss snapped between his teeth, and Casper scrambled beneath the covers and dragged them over his head. The shake in his limbs, in his spine. The sick fucking shake. Lungs heaved. Casper suffocated his breath in his hands and stared with wide, blind eyes out at the darkness beneath the sheets.

It was all he had left. The blackness before death.

A hollow silence passed while Casper hid beneath the covers. Too empty. All he could hear was his own panicked breaths and the broken cackling of the ghoul inside his head. Cain's voice, when he spoke, clashed so harshly against those nightmare sounds that Casper flinched.

"Fine. I'll leave you alone then."

Inside his brain, the ghoul screeched. Casper's petulant cry came muffled by his hands. "I don't want you to go!" Cain shifted behind him. _Leaving_. A jolt shot through his chest and Casper cried into his cupped hands. "Don't _go_!"

_What was that about rock fucking bottom?_

_I don't want to be alone._

"Cas, I'm not—" Even Psycho sounded bewildered. "I don't understand."

"Why don't you want to touch me?"

" _What_?"

"Even you don't want to touch me! I'm dirty. I'm s—so _fucking_ —"

"Cas—Cas, love—" Cain's hand gripped his shoulder through the covers. So hard not to scream and throw it off. "It's not that, love—"

" _Liar._ "

"Cas, it's not. I swear. I—I just—I know you're not doing it because you love me. I want it to be real..." Heartbreak stained Cain's voice and tears must glisten in his eyes. Around his shuddering breaths, Casper grinned. _So easy._ "Look—"

The grip on Casper's shoulder lifted, and spurred by the heart-jerking loss, Casper let out a wail. Behind him, Cain hissed, that gentle tone fumbling from his grasp. "For fuck's... What do you want, Cas? Because I bloody well know you don't want to fuck me. Not really."

Casper sniffled and curled deeper on himself. Something tanged sharp at the top of his throat, and still that thick, acid-copper taste hung there in a glut. "I don't want anything. Go away."

"You just bloody—" Cain broke off with a hiss and his weight shifted. Not enough for him to be going. When he spoke again, he'd recovered a glimmer of calm. "You told me not to go, Cas. Please just tell me what you want."

_I want you to let me go. I want time to spin back so I can jump before you fucking show up. I want to have never sold my soul for fifty quid. I want to never have been born._

Another sniffle, hiccup catching in his throat as he pushed his face deeper into his hands. The ache hung so heavy around him and the sheets suffocated him like six feet of grave dirt on his face.

"I just want someone to h—hold— I want a _hug_."

A deep sigh, aching with tragedy, and this time when the bed shifted, it came with the covers being tugged free of his slackening grip. Light snapped at his eyes and a chill breath needled at his scalp. Casper whimpered and curled deeper into himself.

_I want it to all go away._

"Cas..." Cain's fingers brushed Casper's hair back from his temple, not cold, but still strange in how ... lukewarm they were. Like a hot drink left out too long. "I can do that, love—"

"Don't call me that."

Cain's fingers flinched but didn't draw away. "Alright. I'm sorry... Do you just want a hug, or do you want me to stay?"

"Stay." _This is your worst yet, you pathetic fucking roach._ "Under the covers."

Oh, and there had to be a smile then, a dim echo of the old ones to go with the way Cain's fingers scratched against Casper's scalp. "Alright, Cas. That sounds good."

"Clothes off."

And the smile must widen now. Enough that it touched Cain's voice with a hint of teasing. "Nothing more though."

"Now. I want to go to sleep."

While Cain slipped out of bed and got undressed, Casper shivered with the tension slipping from his muscles. The shuddering breath eased out and when it calmed, he wiped his hands over his eyes. Dry.

Cain frowned as Casper twisted to look over his shoulder at him, and Casper had to fight back the ghoulish smirk. What? Had he been expecting _tears_?

It was a stupid perfect body on him, stood there all adorably awkward with his expensive trousers hanging from his hand and boxers, loose and short, bunched mouth-watering at the very top of his thighs. Casper didn't think he'd ever seen quite so delectable a pair of legs, enough to put a knot in his tongue and dry out his throat.

His stomach lurched and he tore his eyes back up to safer territory while the ghoul whined at the back of his mind, black-clawed hand groping around between its legs. A sharp line scratched between Cain's drawn brows as he studied Casper's face.

"Are you coming?" It was a deadened rasp, ringing hollow. Casper had to quell the twitch at his lips again seeing that withdrawal in Cain.

With a self-conscious shift of his feet, Cain crossed his arms over his chest, tilting awkwardly into the bend of his spine. There was something strange in it, as if he compensated for some flaw that wasn't there. _Where could that come from? I hope one of his lost boys told him he looks bad naked._

"I—" Cain broke off as soon as he began. His hand tightened in the fabric of his trousers.

Was he not going to come? Casper's leg twitched and a shudder ran up through his spine. A shudder that sent a lance of pain up through his neck, fierce and sudden enough that he had to bite back a cry. Cain's hesitance faltered and he started toward Casper. Except in the way you slow and stop when the strobe light falls across a stranger you'd thought you knew, Cain's steps fell short.

Silent. Looking at Casper as if there were something else behind his face.

The black-hole eyes and gaping maw of the ghoul.

Tightness gripped Casper's chest and he twisted his hands through the sheet. The taut pleading came just as easily to his face now as it did when he worked. _Fake it 'til you make it, Roach darling._ "Cain? Please? I—I don't want to sleep by myself."

The resistance crumbled. Cain's trousers fluttered to the floor as he climbed onto the bed and crawled over. Casper's fucking heart fluttered too. Like the butterfly corpses in his stomach twitched in death.

It was so much better than holding the covers when Cain wrapped his arms around him, still almost warm. Cain eased himself under the duvet beside Casper and bundled him up. All the corpses of those butterflies spasmed now, an undead torrent in his throat that gasped sick in the pit of his stomach. Casper choked on a moan and pressed his face into Cain's chest.

Hushing his whimpers, Cain scratched his fingers against Casper's scalp. His breath as he buried his face in Casper's hair tickled, light and cool as a summer breeze. A chuckle drifted with it when Casper butted his head into Cain's fingers and that tickled even more. The sensation and the squeeze Cain gave him almost made Casper smile.

It was so easy to pretend.

Together, they sunk back into the pillows, and Casper squirmed around to curl up against Cain's side. With the strong arms around him and the gentle rise and fall of his chest, it was almost like being back in that heaven. Casper sighed and rubbed his cheek against his smooth skin. Those long fingers slid down his back and lips pressed against the top of his head. So warm...

"Cain?"

"Yes, m—Yes, Cas?"

"Don't be here when I wake up. Looking at you makes me sick and I can only stand it 'cause I still feel like I'm dead."

All that soft ease around him stiffened up and Cain's hand tightened in his hair. "Oh."

Flat. A dead fish slapping against the water. Casper squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face from the blazing sunlight in Cain's taut chest, smiling. The warmth suffused every inch of him now, slow and heavy and dreamy. Darkness edged his mind.

"It's so nice here," Casper slurred, and with a choked shudder, the tension fled out of Cain's body, everywhere but the arms that tightened around Casper like a vice. Breath gasped against Casper's hair like the world would end when he let go.

A sting touched Casper's eyes and he dug his fingers into Cain's chest, twining their legs tight together. Cain hushed him again when his leg twitched and a tremor gripped him, and slow, his voice raw and trembling, he began to croon that nonsense song.

"Why d'you have to be crazy?" Casper could barely hear himself slurring out the words over the patter of Cain's heart and the haze of sleep in his mind. "You're so perfect I wanna die, 'cause you're the only lil' bit of hope I'd ever had. 'Least I can die lookin' at the stars."

They'd been so bright last night, like flickers of dreams in the darkness of sleep. A million years ago and a million years away and from here 'til there, a million miles of freedom. Just like those rolling hills and how the air out there must smell after it rained.

It was right there, but Cain would keep him locked in here until he killed him, shut away from the sun and the flowers and the bright, clean rain.

_I can't die like this._

The dark closed around his head as his heart began to pound.

_I want to die under the stars._


	17. Sprint

Casper waited behind the door, breath coming sharp and short. His palms lay slick wrapped around the chair leg, and he couldn’t stop the image looping in his mind of it flying from his grip as he swung it.

A little comic skit – Cain glaring with his hands on his hips and Casper shrugging at the camera with huge, innocent eyes.

It had taken two days for him to be able to stand for five minutes without his legs feeling like houses of cards in the wind. Cain hadn’t been there when he woke up, but a feast had been. His first attempt at food for Casper had been so unerringly spot on to his favourites that if he hadn’t been so ravenous, he would have been too unsettled to eat.

The withdrawals had never come back and that frightened him more than anything else in this place. Twice before, he’d sweated and shitted and hallucinated his way out of them, and that had consumed almost a week of his life before he felt halfway right again.

If only he had spent the past few nights withdrawing. Maybe then he wouldn’t have fallen to sleep. The nightmares had been so raw that he’d woken up tearing at his own skin.

The ghoul stayed with him, though. It watched from the wardrobe mirror with its palms pressed against the glass and its needle-teeth bared in a grin.

Didn’t matter now. Chair leg to Cain’s head and he’d run until he found some cliff to jump off or a river to drown in. While away the day beneath the beaming sun before he gave up his body to death. Himself. On his own terms. Looking out at something beautiful and not the face of broken dreams.

Fucking nut.

The ghoul stepped back from the glass and pointed at the door. Its black claw rapped against the glass, and a moment later, the key clattered into a lock.

Time. Casper pressed his back against the wall and lifted the chair leg up to his shoulder. The clunk of the lock came gunshot loud through the thumping of his heart.

_Batter up, Roach. Out the park or the noose isn’t ever coming off._

The door creaked. Had it ever creaked before? Creaked as bad as his voice did now, and that sure was bad. Casper whet his lips and widened his stance. A footstep, then another. Cain pushed the door out wider than he’d expected and it almost knocked against his foot. Good thing he’d worn socks. Against this polished floor, the rush of the shower from behind the closed bathroom door muted his shifting feet.

Cain turned toward the bathroom as he stepped in, his arm lifting to rest above his head against the open door. His back stayed to Casper even as he looked back through the doorway.

“You might as well go, ar-too. He won’t be hungry anyway.”

The leg almost dropped from Casper’s hands at Cain’s words. Who the fuck was he talking to? Someone else wasn’t here. Someone else couldn’t fucking be here.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Funny how the strain in Cain’s voice had become normal until Casper heard that old, cultured drawl. The one that had been so rich with emotion no matter how proper it was. “You don’t even have bloody eyes. What am I supposed to do? Stop trying? You and I both know I’m too far gone for that. Go on, piss off – that’s right.”

No footsteps. Only a stir of something cold in the air. Was this guy _even crazier_ than Casper had thought? Fuck.

Sighing, Cain tipped his head back, one hand lifting to pinch the bridge of his nose. This was Casper’s chance. “God, Cain, you’re losing your bloody mind. That boy’s going to be the death of you.” A chuckle, one dark as the curtain of space. Casper froze off to his side. “Again.”

Heart in his throat, Casper lashed out with the chair leg. It met the side of Cain's head with a meaty thunk. He dropped. Casper didn't wait to see if he got back up. One leap over his body and out the door.

Stairs spiralled away, one by rickety one in a choking tower of plaster and sombre wood. The rough finish on the plunging beam scraped across Casper’s hand as he thundered down them, round and round and round like he sprinted through a rotating door that never, ever, ever came to an end.

Was that the hammering his own footsteps or Cain’s behind him? Had he hit him hard enough? Casper’s breath wheezed too loud in his ears over the thump thump thump of his own filthy blood, and a scream built to boiling in his throat. The chair leg slithered against his sweaty palm as if it wanted to—

Casper broke out at the bottom, slammed into the window opposite. Choking on his breath, he whirled around. Nothing. No snarling figure bursting out after him. The vast corridor stretched out both ways, the air in it swallowing him whole, and little lost boy bolted right. His feet skidded across the slick tiles.

The late afternoon sun glared against his eyes and painted the hall fever yellow.

The window-studded corridor streamed past him, then hit another right. In the second’s pause as Casper skittered around the corner, something thudded upstairs, echoed in his chest. _Shit_. The chair leg sat a comforting weight in his hand as he sprinted to the next turn. _Shit_. Left. _Fuck_. Right. _FUCK_.

Cain was up. Cain was fucking up. Casper wanted to scream with this blinding hammering in his chest, but he could hardly breathe to make the wrench of fury and petrification his last fucking wail against this shitty fucking world.

The corridor went on too long. Where was the fucking—

The house dropped away to crystal chandeliers and sweeping staircases that announced the grand salon below.

Casper sprinted for the nearest stairs. The grandeur passed in a blur. Were those footsteps above him? His heart hammered in his chest and his mind screamed _look around_. One glance over his shoulder and that’d be it. Vision filled with Cain's motion-smeared snarl as he drove a knife into Casper’s back.

But nothing came. Not even when he broke out of the towering front door and into the bright fresh air.

Outside… Really, actually outside. Casper's feet stuttered and he almost went flying before he caught himself and took off across the vast green of the grounds.

Hard to breathe now. Harder still. A knife stitched into his side. Was the air thinner out here? Water splurged up from the grass and soaked through his feet, turned each step to a waterlogged stumble. One of those dreams where you run and you run and you’re ice and fucking marble from the terror but you stagger along like you’re sunk in a bath of taffy and putrefying flesh.

So close. God, he was so fucking close to the edge.

Only a thick, bushy hedge marked the edge of the grounds, and like the gaping maw viewed from the inside as you scrambled up the monster's throat, they parted in an unhindered leafy corridor to freedom.

Casper glanced over his shoulder. Head spinning, feet juddering beneath him as he lost the pace. Nothing marring the blur behind him. A wheeze tore from his lungs, choking on this pain ripping through his side and his chest, and he pushed his legs harder. Freedom. Almost there.

Fucking _freedom_. Just—

In the middle of the opening, thin air smashed him in the face.

The ground slammed the last scraps of air out of him, thick copper erupting through his mouth and nose. Casper scrambled up, hauling in thin, gurgling breaths, and ran—

Hard. This time concussing through his skull.

Heart pounding, Casper pressed his hands up against solid air.

_This isn’t happening. Oh my fucking god, this is not happening._

There wasn’t anything there. Casper slammed his palms against it and screamed. There was nothing fucking there.

In the bushes. The invisible wall slipped straight into them but no matter how deep Casper dug amongst the scratching branches, he couldn't feel an edge. Worse, the leaves wavered through the air that blocked his hands like nothing was fucking there.

Raw ice plunged through his gut and his throat burned as he screamed. No give. Nothing. His knuckles shrieked back at him. Blood clogged his nose and drizzled from his chin to the floor. _This is impossible this is fucking impossible fuck fuck fuck FUCK._

“You aren’t going to get through, Cas.”

Cain.

Red hazed Casper's vision as he turned. A feverish heat slathered over the shuddering cold. His hands throbbed on the solid wood of the chair leg.

A trickle of blood oozed from a cut on his temple and he grimaced at Casper like there wasn’t a fuck off invisible wall behind him. Like little Cassie had just stumbled onto his porno collection where it’d been neatly hidden away. The sight of it pulsed the heat deeper through his skull, a fury throbbing between his ears, and beneath it, black.

The sightless pit where the monster opened its jaw to swallow him whole.

Casper screamed and ran at him. A storm of cold whipped across his face and the cunt stood still, unflinching as Casper swung the—

It bounced off. Half a foot away from his head. Cain's grimace deepened as the wooden stick dropped from Casper's boneless hands.

“Cas—”

His fist hit flesh. Right in the cunt’s face. Cain shouted, clutching his hand to his mouth, and Casper jumped at him, teeth bared.

Cain twisted out of his grip, slithery and slippery, and another snarl of cold sliced through to Casper's bones. Ice smothered his wrists and something yanked his arms together in front of him.

Tight. Unyielding.

His hands wouldn’t come loose.

The red vanished and all that was left was cold surging through his veins. Casper staggered, catching his feet beneath him, and backed up to the wall of air.

His fucking hands wouldn't come loose.

And Cain stood there wiping blood from his mouth, his hand squeezed closed in the air in front of him. Totally and utterly at ease. It was fucking freezing, but while his shirt and trousers rippled in the bitter wind, he stood easy and uncaring as if it were a summer breeze and fingered his bloody lip with his corpse hands.

A fucking monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Cassie takes control of his own fate and makes a break but ... well, the poor kid just can't catch a break, can he?
> 
> Now whatever could be going on with Cain? Stay tuned, and if you're a new reader, make sure you bookmark to find out!
> 
> On another note, I always imagined Cain as the kind of guy who'd still own porn on VHS, you know, for that authentic feel (I--uh, I have to return some videotapes)
> 
> Make sure you drop me a like if you enjoyed. I see each one of you who does and I appreciate it sooooo much, thank you all of you! Better yet, drop me a comment, I love hearing what you think!


	18. God

“What the fuck are you?” Casper hissed. The winds almost whipped away his words.

“I told you before, Cas.” Cain wrinkled his nose and spat blood on the floor. He spoke his next words around his fingers reaching into his mouth. “At least mostly human.”

With a yank, he pulled out a tooth and threw it into the bushes. Fresh, thick blood bubbled up from the gap in his perfect teeth, and Casper couldn’t tear his eyes away from the crimson oozing over his chin.

“That one never sits right.” Cain’s finger rubbed against his gum, his nose wrinkled. “I hope you know I’m going to have to kill a baby to put that back.”

Casper's stomach dropped out. _Oh my god, this fucking—_

Cain groaned and waved his hand. “I’m kidding. Just kidding, sorry. Of course you don’t get that.” He put his hand on his hip and ran his fingers back through his rippling hair, sighing. Against the vivid crimson of the setting sun, he cut a striking black silhouette. “God knows teeth are far too easy for babies...”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Tell that to your hands, Cas. Now, are you going to come inside with me?”

What choice did he have? These phantom lashes around his wrists didn’t budge an inch no matter how much he strained against them. There was an invisible wall.

_Now who’s crazy, Roach Boy._

Casper whet his lips and edged up the path toward the hedges towering above him. Some kind of conifer that tickled the back of his neck. The grounds were massive. Maybe if he couldn’t run, he could hide until he found a way out.

“Okay,” Casper croaked. “I’ll come with you.”

A hint of a smile curved over Cain's lips and he stepped aside to let Casper past him into the open grounds. Bugs scurried over his spine, Cain's unseen presence like a knife in his back.

The manor house dominated the centre of the grounds, a hulking behemoth of elegant arches and intricate stonework. A patio lay off to one side, hidden in darkness away from the setting sun and ringed with flower beds that looked in full bloom – a shout of colour against the season. Mostly, though, there was grass. Rolling lawns and loping topiary animals and swathes of flowers across the green. In the far distance, just the right side of the forbidding bulk of the hedge border, a copse of trees straddled a small stream.

Not much of a place to hide, but it was a start.

Cain's long legs carried him effortlessly, and it was easy enough for Casper to trudge in his soaked, mud-logged socks and fall behind. The blinding disc of the sun hung like a spill of blood on the horizon, and it cast Cain’s face in shadow as he glanced back over his shoulder. All dark but for his eyes, glinting fever red.

As soon as Cain turned away, Casper bolted. His feet slapped against the mud and the wind howled in his ears. Behind him, Cain shouted his name. Again and again, and Casper just fucking ran.

“Casper! For fuck’s _sake_!”

He wasn’t coming. Could he not catch him? Could the freaky witch stuff not reach—

The air shuddered. Cold so bitter deep the shock of it stole the strength from his legs. Casper’s knees splashed in the mud and his breath turned to clouds of ice and no inch of him could do anything but quail.

Sick, black rot churned through the air like a mist seeping out from the void between worlds. It blotted out the grounds. It blotted out the sun. Hundreds of metres above his head the mist closed the world off in a dome and Casper sat alone surrounded by a miasma of death. Cold, dark but for a sliver of sunlight peering through a pinhole high above him.

It was _real_. The power of it trembled in his bones, whipped against his skin like a blizzard. A corpse-stink rode high in the air, worming down his throat and suffocating him. Casper hunkered down on the ground, shudders gripping his body like a palsy. What is this? The ghoul crept around the wall and slurped up the tendrils of mists that broke free. Is this magic?

Cain’s footsteps squelched in the mud as he walked past. The sharp cut of him towered against the blackness and he stood over Casper, a god above a bug. Yet in the unfathomable mind of this god, some catastrophic snap had him wasting away in the mud with the worms and the beasts. Delirious, he begged the roach in his cupped hands to love him while he crushed the very life from it.

“Don’t run, Cas. There’s nothing out here. Please just come inside and get warm.”

_Follow, Roach, your god commands you._

Clawed nails dragged up Cain’s arms, and the ghoul poked its head out from behind him. Cain didn’t flinch as the ghoul gnawed on his shoulder, needle teeth gentle against his flesh and Casper glowered at it, at the swirling in its black eyes and the dizzy red flush across its sallow cheeks as it threaded its arms around Cain’s waist and clawed at his chest. The ghoul didn’t mind him an inch.

Traitor.

The ghoul winked and slid its hand into Cain’s trousers.

“Please, Cas,” Cain said. “Come inside. I promise I won’t take you back to your room.”

Casper nodded and stumbled to his feet. What choice did he have? Even if Cain told him he’d be tossed back in that prison to rot, he’d have to follow or the pestilent fog would ferry him there, all his struggles nothing but claws raking through the mist. Shivering, Casper nodded and stumbled up to his feet. The smile Cain turned to him before letting the mist depart was a slice of a dying sun.

There was no hope, and somehow that was more freeing than all the rest of this. Nothing he did now mattered. His fate was sealed. The Norns had dreamed this for him since the moment Cain laid eyes on him in the bar. Before even, back when Jack forced him out of his old bar out of paranoid jealousy. The day he got on a coach with just his backpack and condemned himself to the urban prison. The first time he slung drinks in his old hometown bar. That first, cringing time he’d opened a gay porno on the family computer while no one was home and came as soon as the first cock slipped into a waiting hole.

Maybe the day he was born.

Casper’s startled crack of laughter caught Cain’s attention. He turned back beneath the arching willow that curved above this small side door that he’d led Casper to. Maybe Cain should look triumphant with this victory, but the edges of his lips only pulled out in that weary, almost embarrassed way.

The door opened to a softly lit corridor. It smelt fresher than that vast salon down here. Less dusty, and the floorboards shone in a dull, lived-in way. Casper left the door open, but Cain flicked his finger and the knock of it shutting echoed up the corridor.

 _Fuck_.

The ghoul trailed just behind Cain, its fingers twined around his swinging hand. The wicked grin splitting its face in two made Casper shudder, and dreamy, it swirled its finger around its ear.

“You told me that already,” Casper said to it.

Cain glanced back. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Spiralling, spiralling, spiralling down. Round and round and down on the black-hole eyes of his ghoul. His life was opening your eyes to the world turned on its head, your bed crushing you into the ceiling and everything outside tumbling away into the beckoning void of space.

_This can’t be happening._

Their path wound through the guts of the house, those ugly bits removed from the splendour of the manor, but it was these places – the servant’s kitchen, all big iron pots and stolid wooden counters, and the small breakfast nook, the window by the table now dark with lost light – and only these places that felt like anything more than a mausoleum.

Still, other than the sense of … presence, no other signs of occupation marred the place as if even Cain didn’t live here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also ~magic~!! Now maybe we'll find out why Cain's so icy, Casper definitely isn't letting that business drop. What's your view on this development? Yay or nay?
> 
> I should probably put a note out to anyone who's like "ugh magic, i came here for messed up mxm" -- this is a story that contains magic, but is not *about* magic. Cassie ain't about to go all superhuman on you. This remains, and will until the end, a story about Casper getting his shit together and dealing with Cain (or not doing either, we'll see)
> 
> Drop us a kudos if you like it, and bookmark if you wanna see more! As always, thank you for reading!


	19. Casper the Cowardly Lion

Eventually, the insides of the house spat them out onto the pretty skin. A long corridor trailed away left and right. This length possessed an understated elegance, ornate lamps studding the wall and a Persian runner over the polished wood. Cain stopped outside a room just down the hall and once he stood aside from the open door, Casper shuffled inside.

Fucking money oozing out of its seams, this study. Mahogany panelled the walls, broken only by two huge windows on either side of a crackling hearth in the far wall, both still showing the dusky blue of the sky. The desk was huge - big as a bed and covered with a sweep of paper and tomes that wheezed dust.

The ghoul went straight over to that, sprawled out on its back with its head dangling over the edge, nails tapping against its reflection in the crystallised glass of the drink's cabinet. It could hardly reach across the gap even with its obscenely long arms.

It was ... nice though. Quiet. A bookshelf smothered the wall to the left and even its sturdy wood seemed to sag beneath the books packing out its shelves. The tomes jammed against each other and spilled out into little piles on the floor. A drift of scrolls adorned the very top. Vanilla and tickling incense filled the air and the heat from the fire crackling between the windows on the back wall engulfed him in a shroud. A larger version of the carpet that had run the length of the hall outside lounged over the floor, thick and sumptuous and soft.

Casper tracked straight across it in his filthy socks to stand in front of the fire. Hot. Closer, the scent of woodsmoke danced beneath his nose. Now he stood in this warmth, the shivers waiting in his bones came out. They wracked his body as he clutched his hands to his chest. Was he even still cold? His wrists were, but ... then why did he shiver so violently?

The door shut. Casper jumped, his heart flying up his throat.

"Do you want anything?" Cain's footsteps tracked muffled across the room toward the desk. His dim reflection passed across the right-hand window and settled on the edge of the desk. "You look cold..."

Casper's tongue moved. Rude of it considering he wanted to stick to surly silence. "I ... I could really use a drink."

"Mm, I think I could use one too." Cain stood up from the desk. The ghoul snatched back its arms before Cain could walk into them. Amber whiskey glimmered in a crystal decanter on a small end table just beside the cabinet. Cain shot him a playful glare over his shoulder as he unplugged the decanter. "Considering your dreadful treatment of my head and general face area."

"I had a dream last night that I dug my fingers under your skin and tore off your face."

Cain's shoulders dropped in the reflection and his sigh filled the room. "I take it that was a good dream."

Two glasses clinked together as Cain set them down and the whiskey glugged out of the decanter. Casper sunk to a crouch by the hearth and the heat licked at the palms of his hands.

"I'm glad it wasn't a nightmare," Cain said.

Casper shot to his feet, spun around with a snarl on his lips. "Who fucking said shit about me getting nightmares?"

The dry tilt to Cain's head told him who. Fucking idiot. Casper hissed a curse and crouched back down by the fire. Not to mention if Cain had come anywhere near the bottom of that staircase while he was having one, he'd have heard him scream. One of the many reasons Casper couldn't live with roommates, all under the bold print heading of _GENERALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL JUNKIE_. He didn't function with other people in his space. Couldn't cook or eat or shit. Couldn't _exist_. So he forked out the sky-high rent for a bedsit and forked himself out to pay it.

Maybe it was worth it. Not that it mattered anymore.

He'd never see his flat again. Never smoke out the window and claw some bare appreciation of the cityscape out of the view. Never curl up on the sofa with Mackie on the rare times he put some self-care into his day off, warm and maybe a little tipsy but at least mostly sober, and a comfort film on TV. Never wake up to Jack burning breakfast in the kitchen, but that happened rare enough now anyway.

Would Jack miss him? Had he even noticed Casper was gone yet?

Slow footsteps crossed the room. Cain held out a glass, and in the corner of his vision, it refracted the light of the fire. The amber of the whiskey glowed like sunshine through autumn leaves.

Nice tumbler that. All cut glass and it felt solid cupped between his cuffed hands as he took it from Cain and tipped the whole double down his throat. Nice whiskey too. Too nice. It didn't even burn.

Casper dropped the glass above the slate hearth, but it never hit the tile. It stopped an inch up, and nausea clutched his gut as the glass floated up past his eyes and out of sight.

Magic. Alright, that was why he was shivering. Fucking magic.

"Can you _not_ break my glasses?" Cain said. "Otherwise I'll have to go out and buy you a plastic sippy cup with some teddy bears on it."

Asshole. "I like lions better."

A snort of laughter. "Very well—" Cain lowered himself to the floor beside Casper with a grunt, one knee up to his chest and the other leg stretched out long in front of him. The fire danced across his skin. Shadows flickered over the right side of his face which was fully turned from the fire, but his left eye lit up as amber as the whiskey still held in his hand. He smiled, faint but there. "Lions then."

"You know—" Casper scratched his nail against the tile. It was too long, and it left little white marks against the slate— "the Cowardly Lion. His name's actually Casper."

Cain laughed. "Oh piss off. I read all of those."

"I think he looks a bit like me, you know the guy in that old film?"

"Not even slightly!" More laughter, and as Casper glanced out the corner of his eye, he found the dopey grin stretched back across Cain's lips. It was ... easy, wasn't it? Anything but outright vitriol and Cain fell for it. The blind man tumbling off a cliff as he followed the sound of a waterfall thinking it a spring.

"Of course, that makes you the tin man. You know, no heart?"

So satisfying to see that smile crumble. Casper grinned as he scratched his nail against the tile, and he made sure it was an ugly one.

Cain spoke softly, his eyes turning back out into the room. "You know neither of those things were true in the end. That was the point of the story. The scarecrow was always wise. The tin man ... had a heart, and the lion was the bravest person Dorothy had ever known."

Stupid fucking pathetic asshole. Casper dug his nail against the tile until with a lance of pain through his finger, it snapped. "Guess his name isn't Casper then."

Cain sighed and took a long drink of his whiskey. Then a longer one, and as the last trickled down his throat, he crooked his finger toward the side table and the decanter came drifting into his hand. Casper froze as it moved. He couldn't look straight at it. Just tracked the beast from the corner of his eye, ice crawling down his spine. His heart beat quick. Hard.

"This isn't real," Casper croaked. The fire baked his face and he blinked dry lids over his cooking eyes. His hands began to shake again. "This can't be real."

"I take it you mean the sorcery."

Really, he meant everything. _He'd_ found Casper. Years later and the monster he'd thought he'd left behind had closed its jaws around his head and snapped them tight. Then someone had kidnapped him. A psycho who thought he was his reincarnated lover had _actually_ fucking kidnapped him and now here nutjob was, slapping the fucking supernatural across Casper's face. How could _any_ of it be real?

Maybe he had jumped. Maybe the heroin had killed him. Maybe this was the afterlife and he still wasn't sure if it was heaven or hell.

He nodded anyway, hunkering down in his crouch. That maybe was probably the only thing keeping him going.

"Here—" The whiskey glugged out into the glasses, one then the other, another over-generous helping. He handed the glass to Casper and took a respectable gulp out of his before continuing— "What do you want to know?"

Casper took a deep drink, mulling Cain's question on his tongue. Another drink. It had to be stupid nice, but he couldn't taste a thing. "How?"

"Born with it," Cain said, "or as close to that sort of random chance that no one I've met can figure a difference. Not even me. It's a few and far between gift, be it a trickle or a flood. There are two variations; each draw from two planes that lie ... like a skin against our world. Veil and Void. I draw on the Veil."

Planes. _Magic_. Shit. Casper's mind raced trying to find a hole, but he'd seen it. That mammoth flood of black fog that had wiped out the sky.

Despite himself, Casper kept probing. It was too much to pass up no matter how much he wanted to scream. 

"Is that why you're so cold?"

Cain's jaw tightened, eyes shuffling off to glower at the other side of the room, and he took a long drink. "No ... the Veil does manifest as _cold_ , but I'm ... like this because of ... something I have to do to myself. Every time. 

"Ell—I mean the—" Cain broke off with a sigh. "This cycle of rebirth, it's a curse, and every aspect was meticulously designed for cruelty. She—Well, it would be commendable if I was in a commending mood."

Well was the biggest bit of shrouded implication that Casper had gleaned from him. Not just this _she_ , but the curse and the hint of purpose behind it, and whatever had Cain looking sick in his own skin.

That part he hid the best, but Casper knew the look. The taut muscles and the way his limbs shifted to hold subtly apart from themselves. The hand Cain rubbed down the leg he had out straight like touching a memory, and a compulsive turn of his hand, clearly familiar if only for how awkward it looked twisting his thumb to run along the far side of his ring finger.

Holding the glass steady between his cuffed hands, Casper slipped out of his crouch to sit cross-legged on the floor. Closer to Cain, one knee dropped just an inch away from Cain's outstretched leg. Cain's eyes flickered down as Casper settled, a moment of tight, indrawn breath before Casper stopped just short of touching him.

Warmth seeped through his jeans from the floorboards, and heat baked out of the slate tiles against his other knee. Casper held Cain's eyes as he sipped the whiskey, and like Casper puppeteered his limbs, Cain mirrored it and took another long drink himself. Almost all of his glass was gone now.

Maybe if he got drunk enough he'd forget Casper was still cuffed. Forget all the sick things he could do while Casper couldn't even struggle.

Casper pressed his eyes closed for a moment, cramming the twisting nausea down his throat. Questions. Not those thoughts of horrors. "How does it work? What sort of things can it do?"

"Mm..." Cain swirled the dregs of whiskey around the glass and sipped at them, his head tilted as he studied Casper's face. Dazzled eyes, not the dull calculation that must be in Casper's. How much did this blind him? "I suppose you don't want the academic version."

Of _course_ there was an academic version. Casper let himself smile, just a small one that twitched at his lips, and mimicked the tilt of Cain's head. "The short academic version."

Cain's eyebrows pulled together a moment before a bright smile spread across his lips. "Very well. The short version then ... let's see..."

The firelight turned the drift of his hair lambent as he tipped his head back. Absently, he drained the last of his drink, and with a dance of his fingers through the hot, dry air, the decanter lifted itself and tipped out another glass. Casper's heart began to pound, a thrill shivering through his veins.

Magic.

Real magic, and not just the siren spell of Cain's voice as he began to speak, slow and low and the timbre was like the resonant frequency to that smooth purr of his voice. It was all very ... wordsy. Scientific. Most of it slid right over Casper's head – entropy and physics and energy manipulation – but the sound of Cain's voice, it lulled him, and Casper watched him talk hypnotised - parted lips and big wide eyes as he ate up the words.

Right until Cain jolted up out of the lounge he'd eased into. "Oh _cock_ —"

Casper's heart slammed against his ribs. Fucking made him jump. That cunt had reeled him in so well, got Casper leant in over his crossed legs with big _fuck me master_ eyes. Built right into him, wasn't it, offering himself up on a fucking plate. Second nature. Dusty shit and Cain's fucking voice made it sound like poetry anyway. The smile edging around Cain's sheepish grimace looked way too knowing as his eyes traced over Casper's face. A faint pinkish flush drifted across his cheekbones.

Nausea lurched through Casper's gut and he tipped the rest of his whiskey down his throat.

"What?" Casper croaked.

Cain blinked, once, twice, gaze swimming as if he hadn't quite heard. " _Oh_. No, I just—I left those bloody cuffs on you, didn't I?" _For fuck's sake._ "I'm sorry, Cas. Here—"

The whiskey tumbler drifted off on a flick of his fingers and he passed his hand above Casper's wrists, so close the bloom of cold felt like a second skin trapped between theirs. Then the flare faded and disappeared, and Casper snatched his hands away. Seemed like the motion snatched the smile from Cain's lips as well.

"Sorry, Cas," Cain said, his voice low and a little maudlin. "That was an awful thing to forget, I'm sorry."

Why did he have to sound so fucking genuine? Maybe he was. All of this, it was all real to him if he was that deep in the crazy. Casper was his _reborn lover_ , and apparently, in this narrative, they were both targets of a curse to keep this happening. A curse set by _she_. Must be easy to believe when you were _literally_ a fucking wizard. Or sorcerer, if it was sorcery. Probably only because it sounded better. Whatever.

But how much did Cain believe it? More importantly, how desperately did he want it to be true?

Casper whet his lips and held his empty glass out to Cain. Warmth spread through his fingertips now, tingling across the bridge of his nose, but it wouldn't touch him too much. Not yet. He'd almost been able to keep up with Jack drinking, at the beginning of the night at least, and Jack could outdrink everyone they both knew, but _Cain_ – he fumbled the glass he took off Casper and snorted at himself as he did it. The smile had already returned to his lips and it had that same endearing lopsided tilt it'd had in the bar, one that Casper hadn't seen since.

Shame it just made his stomach turn. But he couldn't make himself leave, not when Cain was being so loose-tongued about this fucking _magic_.

"What was the ... the—" Casper scratched his nails against his jeans, searching for words— "the black fog?"

"Hm? Black— _Oh_ , no, that's the same." Cain flicked Casper's glass through the air to him and a shiver of cold ran down Casper's wrist as he caught it. "Manipulation of raw energy. I mean like I said, most sorcerers can't conjure up more than those cuffs so it was a bit of an overkill but I _really_ didn't want to chase you around the whole bloody grounds with my head hurting this much."

"But it was—"

"Black, yes. Pull enough raw energy and you start to partially manifest the Veil or Void in this plane. It isn't actually black in the Veil though. Awful place actually. Very _purgatory_. The landscape mimics our own – as I said, like a skin on top of our world – but there's _nothing_ , just miles and miles of this off-white grit. Stinks too." Cain wrinkled his nose and took a sip of his whiskey. "Like rotting corpses. I've gone completely off topic, haven't I?"

If Casper assumed consistency right now, assumed Cain knew as much about this as he talked like he knew – because really, Casper had nothing else to go off – then he assumed the average was _most people can't do much more than those cuffs around your wrists_. If that were the case, that mammoth display... Shit. A shiver ran down Casper's spine and he pulled his knees up to his chest. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Casper would make a great cowardly lion, don't you?
> 
> So Casper got the 'Yer not a wizard, Cassie, but if ye were a wizard, this here is how she'd work' talk, i.e. Cain gets dusty about sorcery.
> 
> (If this was my other novel, I'd leave a little character note about him getting drunk and trying to teach a ferret (disclaimer: not a real ferret) astrology, but it isn't so I'll just leave you with this)
> 
> Thanks to all of you for reading! Leave me a kudos if you enjoyed!


	20. I Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope no one thought he was just going to lay down and accept this. Cassie's the ever the underdog, but the underdog still has teeth. Boy knows one thing, and that's how to keep men happy.
> 
> Next episode's got some of that sweet, sweet almost-smut, so enjoy!

"Cas," Cain asked, "are you alright?"

Shaking. Alright, he'd started shaking again. This was crazy. So Cain wasn't just a sorcerer, he was like the fucking Master Sorcerer, capital letters and all. The whiskey sloshed around in Casper's glass as he lifted it to his lips, and a splash trickled over the corner of his mouth and down to seep along his jaw, cold.

A shift, rustle of fabric beside him. "Cas?"

How did someone like that still sit here beside him with that much concern tight across his brow? As if he was a real person and not a god.

Casper cleared the thickness out of his throat and whet his lips. "You're—"

And he couldn't make himself get any further. Cain sighed and his shift turned to a full-body movement closer to Casper, then he leant over on his side so he got closer still, hand planted on the floor beside Casper's hip and his tilted head still almost level with Casper's no matter how much he slouched in that lean. No cold radiated from Cain's skin, but the heat – the _realness_ – of a person was missing, and yet there was still a presence about him. A pressure.

Cain lifted his free hand and Casper knew the slowness with which Cain moved it toward his jaw was giving him time to pull away. No matter that Cain could make Casper do anything he wanted, he still gave him that pretence, that breath of a chance.

Trembling, Cain's fingers brushed away the whiskey spilt from the corner of his mouth, a wet smear across his skin, and ... they lingered – warm like summer, like raw meat just beginning to cook.

Like the flush of warmth in your stomach from a man who'd once given you butterflies when you thought everything inside you that could feel something had died under someone else's hands.

A tight, wet whimper choked up Casper's throat and he pressed his hand to his mouth. It wasn't fair. Didn't he deserve something good? He'd even let himself try. He'd opened up the soft bit and Cain had held it so tenderly that he'd thought _maybe_ – fucking _maybe_ – things could get better. Then he fucked it up himself anyway for _Jack_ and it looked like this was all he deserved anyway. A fucking psycho, and worse, a psycho who he'd ... he'd really, really liked him. Maybe a little scratch of himself had already started falling for him.

"Cas..."

Cain murmured his name like a prayer. His fingers trailed over Casper's throat, little electric sparks dancing in their wake, and his hand slipped around the back of Casper's neck to play with the wisps of hair. Another whimper died muffled behind Casper's hand. It felt so nice. How could Cain touch him without feeling sick?

"I'm sorry." Cain's murmur was cotton-soft. "Is that too much? I didn't want to scare you with this."

Casper shook his head. Croaking, his voice came muffled behind his hand. "It's like magic."

Soft laughter, a sound he felt in Cain's breath light against his cheek. He'd gotten so close. When had he gotten so close? "It is, isn't it? I felt like that when I found out I could do it. All I could think was what _else_ is real? Are there vampires and ghosts and kelpies and demons?"

The words hit too close. Far, far too close to what he would have lain in bed tonight dreaming about. Casper's voice cracked as he asked, "Are there?"

"None that I've found evidence of, but maybe ... maybe in another world... There are creatures, though, in the other planes. Monsters of all kinds. It's wonderful, even if most of them want to eat you."

Monsters. Casper pulled his knees tighter to his chest and glanced up at Cain. The look on his face almost made Casper burst out crying, a loud gasp of it around this lump building in his throat. The wonder in Cain's eyes, pink flush high in his cheeks now and a smile so wide it must ache, all with the firelight setting everything alight in its soft, flickering glow.

Smitten. That's how he looked. About time to call that what it was. Cain looked utterly smitten, and it was only because his twisted mind thought Casper was someone else.

He was so close his breath fluttered across Casper's lips, quick and shallow and sharp with whiskey, and Casper couldn't see all his face at once. Just the wide, dancing eyes or the breathless smile or the sharp, strong line of his jaw or the glossy waves of his hair.

Casper kept coming back to his lips though, a tug through his chest whenever he looked away that centered on them with a low, keen ache. Soft, pink lips parted around white teeth and Cain's shaky breaths. Nothing like the chapped things Casper had, but somehow Cain kept looking at his lips anyway.

Like he wanted to kiss his lover from lifetimes ago.

Nausea wrenched through Casper's gut and all the fuzzy heat fled his body, leaving behind nothing but a sick cold.

"Stop touching me," Casper hissed, and Cain flinched, dazed eyes blinking hard. "Right now."

Cain near scrambled back in his haste to open up the distance between them. "Cock." His hands dragged over his face. "Bloody hell, I'm sorry, Cas. I—I keep— It started so well and I—God, I forget I messed it all up. I'm so sorry."

"Isn't that nice?" Casper lurched to his feet and stalked across the room. The ghoul sashayed over to his spot by the fireplace and stretched out all feline with its head in Cain's lap. It watched Casper pace on itching feet with its head like a metronome, grinning.

"At least one of us can get settled in here." It started as a hiss, but with each word, his voice rose to a hoarse scream. "Have your morning coffee and smile because your new lost boy's sitting upstairs and hey—maybe he'll get drunk enough to kiss you later. Maybe he'll forget for one— _fucking_ — _second_ that you fucking _kidnapped_ — _him_! You fucking nut. Fuck you! And _you_ —" Casper bit his tongue and spun away with a snarl. And you, ghoul, fucking nothing. Stupid ghoul. Little fucking traitor curled up like that. The degenerate just liked the power play.

A hot shudder coiled down through Casper's gut and he almost gagged.

And how could Cain fucking hang his head like that? Slumped shoulders and his hand rubbing over his chest like he was fucking _sorry_. Ever the brainless, curious beast, the ghoul tilted its head and reached up to scratch one nail along Cain's jaw. A chittering sound came up its throat, a little sad, and another nail joined the first.

"Stop that," Casper hissed at it. Rubbing up against him like a pet was one thing but _comfort_ —Fuck, he was going to be sick.

Good thing Cain took the words as meant for him, and better still that he looked so confused by what he was supposed to be stopping. Whatever hold Casper had on him compelled him to shift around anyway, clumsy with drink. He juggled the ghoul around in his lap until he settled with his legs crossed, and the way his hands sat in his lap was almost like they wound into the ghoul's hair.

Casper hated how nice it looked.

After a moment, Cain sighed and dragged his fingers back through his hair. The decanter floated up into his hand.

"Look, Cas—" The whiskey glugged out into his glass and he took a deep gulp out before continuing— "I'm sorry I've done this to you. I cocked up. I really, really cocked up—"

Casper stopped, huddled around himself in the centre of the room, and laughed, tight and bitter. "Understatement."

"Understatement." Another drink. "Yes. I know. But, well, I've done it now—"

"It's easily undone."

"So I can never see you again?" Cain took another gulp, a troubled tightness settling around his hazy eyes. "And by the looks of it, you're set on killing yourself – and a good bit of that is my fault, I know – but even if you don't, you're still _gone._ I don't like this go 'round anyway so I'll probably top myself too, which is just a total waste, and if you're out there on your own, Cas, they'll—" Cain trapped that word on his tongue and swallowed it with a draught of whiskey. Elbow resting on his knee, he rubbed his hand over his face and his shoulders drooped. Strange nausea had settled over his face, and he swayed sitting there. Drunk?

Casper's voice stuck in his throat, and he coughed to clear space for his rasp. "If you're trying to make me feel guilty, it's not working." And if he was, he was even fouler than Casper had thought.

"What?" Cain lifted his head and frowned at him. A note of anguish strained through his voice. "Bloody hell no, Cas. God, it—it breaks my fucking heart seeing you like this. You—You called me, and you were on that bridge and I—I couldn't bloody _think_ straight. I just wanted to keep you safe, love. I'd do _anything_ to keep you safe. I'd—I _have_ died for you, and I just bloody can't let you go so that _cunt_ of a boyfriend you've got can scream at you instead of—"

A lurch of revulsion tore through Casper's gut and broke past his lips in a ragged snarl. "Fuck off! You've never even fucking met Jack, don't get fucking high and mighty with me, _kidnapper_."

Cain snorted, leaning back on his elbow and taking another drink. "Oh, my _deepest_ apologies, Casper. Tell me, was he coming? You told him you needed him too, didn't you? Was he coming?"

All the colour drained out of Casper's face. Stomach dropped out and he clutched his arms tighter to his chest. "Shut up."

"Was he, Casper? Do you think he knows you're gone yet?"

"I said shut up!"

The tumbler gleamed with the firelight as Cain tipped it to him and took another drink. Lounged right back on his elbow now, and the ghoul curled against his chest, scratching at his face with its claws. "I can't let you go so you can die, Cas. Even if I've made it worse, I just can't. Right now, it'd be like I ignored you when you asked for my help just the same as Jack did, and I can't do that."

Casper lurched forward and slapped the glass out of Cain's hand. It crashed against the slate in a storm of stars spun from shattered crystal and glistening light. The tight knot in Casper's chest burst in a scream. "Well, I want to fucking die! I don't want to live here and I don't want to _live_!

"And what have you fucking done to me? Why don't I need it anymore? You don't have any fucking _right_ to take that away. I want to die! I don't want to live in a world where no one fucking cares about me and—and that has—has—has _happened_ to me, and don't—" Casper jabbed his finger at Cain where he'd sat up, mouth open, and snarled out his words—"don't you fucking _dare_ tell me you care. You're a fucking nutjob, and this—" an abrupt stop in his words, Casper spread his arms wide and stumbled back a step— "this is all I fucking deserve.

"Even my fucking demon's just laughing in my fucking— _SHUT UP_!" Casper shrieked. The ghoul's moans echoed through his head. No clothes, all gone to bear his foul, broken skin, and its hands pawing over Cain's chest. "Stop it! Get your fucking hands off him, just fucking _STOP—IT_!"

"Casper—" Cain staggered getting to his feet, and the ghoul squatted on the floor behind him with its hand around its dick and it _laughed_ while it moaned. "Cas, love—love—"

"Don't call me that!" Casper's scalp burned as he twisted his fingers into his hair. Burned. His skin burned. "Go away, leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Leave me _alone_."

But he didn't. Psycho didn't. Psycho grabbed Casper's hands and forced them out of his hair. Psycho let him twist them free and when Casper battered them against his chest, he just held on to Casper's waist and took it. Psycho cradled him against his chest when Casper's arms fell heavily to his side, one arm around his waist, and the other cupped around the back of his head.

Psycho held him like he cared.

Casper sobbed and pushed his face into Cain's chest, slipped his arms around Cain's waist, and the warmth engulfed him.

"I hate you," Casper hissed. "You ruined my life and you ruined the one good thing I thought I'd found. I hate you."

A sigh warmed the top of Casper's head and Cain's fingers scratched against his scalp. "I know, love. I'm poison. I've always been poison."

"Why won't you let me die?"

Cain pressed his lips to Casper's head. A tremor caught in Casper's body, a leaf fluttering in the wind. "Because I love you too much. The world's a hollow, empty place without you and you deserve to live.

"And I'm sorry I ... took away the need. You were already out, love, and I—I know how bad it is. I really, really do, and I thought ... I had opioid blockers and I thought what's the harm in keeping him out for a little longer? If you want more, I'll give it to you, Cas. I'll give you anything in the world you could want as long as it keeps you with me, but I thought ... at least ... I could give you a chance."

And god, it ached to hear Cain talk so, so much. He cared. Even if it was just in this stupid fucking delusion, he cared, and why did it have to take that for someone to love him? Cain's hands on him crawled. It made Casper sick to let Cain touch him, but at the end of it all, it felt right anyway, because what touch but Jack's did Casper know that didn't take him right to the edge of the cliff. At least Cain felt as if he were holding him back from it instead of struggling to push him off.

"I want to not exist," Casper whispered into Cain's chest. "I want to have never existed. I want to tear off my skin."

"I can't do that, my love. I can't, I'm sorry."

"I want Jack back."

Cain's hand stuttered in his hair, a tightness going through his arms. "Do you?"

And no part of him could deny the response that drudged off his tongue. "No." He never did. Not for a long time. It was always so much more peaceful without him.

Cain relaxed as soon as he said that, a kiss like a petal settling on Casper's head. "I know you deserve better than me, love, but you know that at least, and you definitely deserve better than anyone who isn't there when you need them to be."

No. He didn't. But Jack made him so anxious these days that he couldn't subject himself to it any longer.

And yet ... no matter. Not anymore. He'd never be seeing Jack again. He'd never have to sit there while Jack cried and apologised for everything he'd just do again and take him back no matter how much it put a black pit of dread in his gut. Never have to subject Jack to the black hole that was Casper, and maybe then things would get better for him. Maybe Jack would just think he'd upped and left. Run away. Just like he should have done so, so long ago.

"I want a cigarette." Casper's tongue moved easier now like a weight had lifted from it. "I want my lion from my flat and I want a book to read and I want clothes that I haven't been wearing for five days and I want a warm bath and I want to sit outside. At least just for ten minutes..."

The arms around him squeezed tighter, so gorgeously warm, and Cain's smile put an arch through the lips pressed against his head. "I can do that, my love. I can do all of that. You can go outside for as long as you like as well. I never meant to leave you in that room, you can go anywhere you want now, I swear.

"I—" Cain sighed, still a slight chill to the breath that gusted against his head. "What I meant to say, Cas—what I'd been trying to say is we're—we're here now. We're both stuck together and we're both ... we're both broken. Maybe we could make the best of it? I don't care if you'll—I mean I know, Cas. I _know_ you'll never love me, and you'll always hate me, but I want you to be happy. I want to give you everything I can here. I'll treat you like a king, love, if only you'll let me."

A shudder gripped Casper and with the sob that choked up his throat, he pressed his face into Cain's chest and twisted his fingers into his shirt.

How blind did this make Cain? It scooped out his eyes and ground them to a mush. It ruptured his eardrums and clogged them with cement. It tore each nerve from his body so that he existed suspended in a senseless black nothing and Casper could thunder down on him with a ten-tonne truck and he'd never even notice.

Never having to worry about his old life again was so, so freeing, but running away from here and starting a new one where no one knew him and the world around him was fresh and green and warm? It was like standing on the precipice before the vast heavens and spreading the wings on his back. And _this_ was his way out. His wings.

Casper stood on his tiptoes and rubbed his nose in the crook of Cain's neck. "I want to go to sleep with you," he whispered against Cain's skin, breathing in the heady, winter scent of him. "I don't like sleeping by myself."

"Oh." Just a breath, a gasp. Cain pulled him in tight, drawing him up and burying his face in Casper's hair. "I can definitely do that, my love. Do you want to sleep in my room? I know you'll like it, Cas, and I'll be gone when you wake up, I promise."

A grin curled Casper's lips as he sunk into the heat and the care, and like pinpricks, the ghoul's claws dug into his sides. Casper caught the empty black pits of its eyes over Cain's shoulder and lifted his head to mouth an apology to it.

He should have remembered – the ghoul always knew the right thing to do.


	21. Bad Behaviour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Smut (almost), dub-con elements, the obvious power dynamics, memories of consensual non-con

A week or so later, Casper awoke engulfed in Cain’s heat. Pretty gross, really. Reminded him why he and Jack always rolled apart when they drifted off. All this _sweat_ , like a second skin everywhere their limbs tangled together – between his legs, all up his front, under his cheek. Really gross. Way too hot too, and it probably wasn’t already unbearable only because Cain was just cold-blooded. Cain’s breath drifting down over his hair kind of smelt, and Casper’s mouth felt like a slime-coated desert, and yeah, there was the slime, all drooled over Cain’s chest.

Super gross.

Grumbling, Casper freed one of his arms to wipe the spit from under his jaw and found a less sweaty place to put his head. Was it actually dark in here today? Black blotted out the window at the far end of the room – the spectacular one that wrapped around either side and cut away part of the roof like a conservatory tacked onto the bedroom – and only a faintly pinkish light seeped through, like closing your eyes tight against the sunlight, but even when you shielded them, a little still crept in. Maybe that was why he felt so well-rested. What kind of psychopath slept without curtains?

Didn’t account for the nightmares though, or like, the no nightmares. For those, he woke up screaming alone in the dark, throat raw, and scrambled, panicked, for the light to chase out the demons of his memory.

But he hadn’t woken up. Felt like he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time he slept, and neither had Cain. Absolutely dead out.

Casper peeled back his eyelids properly and met the black pits of the ghoul on Cain’s other side. It had never stayed with him this long before, but this whole fucking mess was just one long mental break. Call this settling into it, and it had gotten _so easy_ to settle in.

Little by little. The gibbering ghoul leading the blind man over the cliff.

First, Casper stayed away – explored the grounds and just enjoyed the outdoors. Cain had a few massive taxonomy books in his library and high on the excitement of it all, Casper had been wondering around ticking off all the weird Latin names of the plants and bugs in his head. Or his best guess at least because he sure as hell didn’t know what this beetle’s dick looked like, but even best guesses were fun. It had been years since he’d walked around somewhere so green, and each breath of air felt like it purged some of the shit from his lungs.

Probably, he never should have started smoking again, but what did that fucking matter? He deserved at least that little bit of enjoyment in the closing days of his life.

The second day, he’d found Cain eating breakfast in that nook in the servant’s kitchen and sat down to join him. Seemed like Cain disdained the rest of the house, and Casper liked that. Meant when he gradually started taking more meals with Cain, mostly silent, he didn’t have to cower in the grandeur. Sometimes, while they sat there, Cain said something – an offhand comment that came out like he’d been running it around his head for hours – and sometimes it made Casper laugh. Cain’s smile when it did made him dopesick, and not in the familiar way.

Some nights, freshly finished lurking in the dark bits of the house, Casper would wander into Cain’s study. He’d ask Cain to come to bed with him, and Cain always smiled like the sun and promised he wouldn’t be there when Casper woke up. Even when Casper came down in the middle of the night, having gone to sleep in his own bed and woken with a nightmare that had him creeping through the dark corridors to Cain’s arms, Cain took him gladly and he was never, ever there when Casper woke up.

Last night, Casper had told him he didn’t need to leave, and he’d never seen someone so stupid happy with such a small thing. Then, he had been looking pretty wrecked. Fucking nut just made a cuck of himself. Casper hardly even needed to try. _Let’s make the most of it_ , like Casper had _any fucking choice_ about it. So sure, he’d make the most of it. Even if he never escaped at least he’d have a good fucking laugh at Cain’s face when he realised it was all fake.

Then he’d probably keep on at it anyway, and by then, Casper was sure he’d have dug enough into this enigmatic shell to get really cruel, and maybe that’d be the heaven-hell duality he deserved. Maybe he was the devil’s own punishment, cursed to love the boy who tore him apart.

_And here’s to all you lost boys. Hope you’re laughing now._

Grinning, Casper nuzzled in against Cain’s side and stretched all the sleep out of his muscles, lithe and feline. Well, he liked to think it was lithe and feline, probably he just looked like an insect struggling to get off it’s back, but Cain kinda made him feel like that anyway. The heat beneath the covers sunk right into his bones, and the thin light that came through the blacked-out windows cast just enough brightness to sink sallow into the ghoul’s skin. Like gruesome twins, they curled up either side of Cain, heads pillowed on his shoulders.

“Should I wake him up?” Casper whispered to the ghoul.

With a pouty gathering to its thin, bloodless lips, the ghoul shrugged and tugged down the covers until it exposed their hips. The ghoul slept naked, swollen member poking out past the leg he had bent up on Cain’s chest, its foot tickling against Casper’s in the middle, but Casper and Cain still had boxers on. Not that Casper was any less _engorged_ than the ghoul.

Damn, he’d been spending too much time with this prick. Since when had he even thought shit like _engorged?_ How much would Jack laugh at him if he came out with that?

“Am I not going to be here when he wakes up?”

That sounded poetic, but the ghoul wagged its finger and lifted its leg, a lewd display of its cock and heat-heavy balls. Its long, ragged nail scratched along Cain’s waistband and in his sleep, a murmur slipped Cain’s lips and his hips twitched into the touch.

 _Ah_ , there it was. The hardness of him, unshielded by the ghoul’s leg. It looked big, and Casper _did_ like big, but he’d also probably throw up if he fucked Cain right now. Plus it still kind of hurt to shit.

Casper shuddered and slammed the memory out of his head.

“I don’t want to fuck him,” Casper told the ghoul, and the ghoul rolled its eyes like he was being a baby but shook its head anyway. “What then?”

Like a ghost, the ghoul’s hand traced over the hardness, so close it tickled against the cotton, but as Cain’s hips pushed unconscious into the touch, it kept away. A refusal to touch. Teasing.

Oh, Casper could _tease._ Jack really liked that. He liked it when Casper drove him crazy until he snapped and fucked him so hard he couldn’t walk afterwards, and sometimes Casper wasn’t really sure if he wanted to stop or not, but that was exactly why he’d refused to make a safeword for them. There was no squirming out of the way Jack fucked him and failing was part of the game.

Maybe he could make Cain snap. Maybe it’d feel good if he really deserved it.

Heart quickening, Casper slipped his hand under the ghoul’s and grazed his palm over Cain’s hardness. It sure did twitch pretty, and the heat emanating from it warmed him right down to the pit of his gut. While he was still asleep, it was easy to glide over him like that, slipping over his cock and the heaviness of his balls. His legs were parted around Casper’s, and Casper had a good feel down there. Big and sloppy and loose. The kind of balls you wanted slapping your face while someone fucked it. Just the brief image of it while he caressed them had him aching. Maybe it had been too long since he’d had a wank for this. Maybe it had been just long enough.

Sliding his hand onto Cain’s thighs came like a breath of cool air, and the taut muscle in Cain’s hips and stomach trembled as they relaxed. He murmured, sweet and sleepy, and tightened his arms around Casper, rubbing his face against his hair.

Grinning, Casper pulled himself up so he lay out on top of Cain, just tall enough for his mouth to rest against Cain’s throat while their hips pressed together. The ghoul pinched his ass and Casper bucked into it, trapping a moan in his throat.

Maybe the ghoul didn’t know what was best, but the ghoul always knew exactly the best way to get him into trouble.

Slow, achingly slow, Casper began to roll his hips against Cain’s. Hardly took a few goes for his slackening arms to tighten and for him to push up into that pressure, but Casper was _good_ and the way his legs spread around Cain’s hips put him just right to make that pressing the least satisfying thing in the world, so bereft of what you needed that your mind went crazy looking for more.

Didn’t take long for Cain’s eyes to flutter open, a gasp on his lips and his hands tightening like vices on Casper’s sides.

“Wh—” Quickly broken in a grunt as Casper closed his lips on Cain’s throat. Hot and wet and full of slathering tongue. He kept his hips moving just the same, but the pressure from Cain’s quickly got desperate.

Fuck, his hands felt good, bruising tight and dragging with shuddering intensity over Casper’s sides and down to his hips. And that wasn’t even counting that thick pressure against the inside of Casper’s thigh.

He ached for it, something dizzy swaddling his head and heat slithering around in his gut. Fucked. Used. Cain’s growl in his ear telling Casper he loved him while he hurt him. Shuddering, Casper bit down on Cain’s throat and it drew a loud moan, Cain arching his neck and grinding up against Casper’s hips.

Prince Charming thought it sweet to stop his hands on Casper’s waist, so Casper grabbed them and put them on his ass, and those fingers closed on the soft flesh like they were made to be there, palms pressing in from the bottom and his fingers pushing into the cleft, pulling his cheeks apart _just fucking right._ Casper nibbled his way up Cain’s throat until he reached his ear, and as Casper nipped at it, he groaned. With his hands in Cain’s sweaty hair, Casper forced Cain’s head around so his lips closed on Casper’s throat.

Hot. The skin there sung with that tactile wetness, nerves alight sending static into his veins. Cain’s lips moved there just as smooth as he kissed, nestled right into the crook of Casper’s neck where it just _got_ him – squirming and moaning and _god,_ those lips around his dick would be filth _._ And that tongue. _Fuck_ that tongue. And he moved his hips like fucking sin and Casper had just been going to tease him but now Cain had him the hot fucking mess. His hands slid down inside Casper’s boxers, touch electric, and his fingers tugged and probed just short of anything just the way that drove him fucking crazy.

Casper wrenched his mind out of the sub-bitch-gutter – _get some control of this, Roach –_ and twisted out of Cain’s grip, sat up, and flung the covers all the way off them. Straddled Cain’s hips with his ass pressed against that hardness. In the dim light, shadows carved Cain’s face to perfection as he devoured the sight of Casper.

Hardly took any false injection of neediness – the pretences and the fake moans – to grind against Cain like he was sliding that cock in and out of himself. Head thrown back like the ecstasy consumed him.

“Cas—” Hands back on his waist and this time they didn’t move with him, they held him back. “Oh _fuck_ , Cas—Cas, love, stop it.”

Casper glanced down, all pouty lips and a flash of those scars, and Cain melted at the look. Shit, he always melted at the look, but this one looked like it turned him into a puddle of goop. “Stop what?”

Cain’s head pressed back into the pillow, desperate gasps breaking from his throat. God, he looked so fucking hot like that. Heat flushed cheeks and slack lips and no more mister perfect with his hair all stringy with sweat and thrown into disarray by the twisting of his head. Casper wanted to see it again and again and again. He wanted to see that face when he came.

“ _This_ , Cas. Stop— _ah—_ Cas, you don’t—”

Interesting. Casper cocked his head and deepened his pout. “Why? Aren’t you enjoying it?”

“Cas,” Cain hissed between gritted teeth, “Cas, you don’t want me to fuck you.”

“No I don’t. You make me sick.”

“Well, I’m bloody fucking going to whether either of us want me to or not if you don’t _fucking—stop._ ”

And on the last word, Casper stuck his hand between them and squeezed the bulge trapped behind silk. Cain surged up to sitting, eyes blazing and the shape of a snarl on his lips that had ice running down Casper’s spine and heat surging up to meet it. Only a glimpse, then he had Casper pressed against his chest and his lips locked on his throat and the hand on the small of Casper’s back grinding his hips down into the inimical pressure of Cain’s against his.

A wanton moan broke from Casper’s throat, and he shoved Cain’s hands down onto his ass and with nails dragging into Cain’s back, clutched himself close – all sweat smeared between their chests and each of Cain’s laboured breaths pushed against his ribs and the only inch of space between them was the inch that kept all that carnal pressure off his aching cock.

Fumbling, Casper dragged down Cain’s boxers, and the touch of his hardness against Casper’s thigh turned to skin-on-skin, rigid heat, thick with dampness brushing the end. Fingers brushed against Casper’s asshole, a dry friction that had him crying—

Cain lifted him off his lap. Enough of a shove in the last bit that Casper tumbled back on the bed. Cain’s cheeks were flushed gorgeous pink and his hair drenched with the same sweat that trickled over the heaving muscles in his back, between the sharp, red lines Casper’s raking nails had left there. Not another look at Casper, he swung out of bed and fumbled himself back into his pants and stalked to the bathroom.

Only at the door did Cain finally pause and look back. Scalding hot arousal pulsed through the tight guilt that slathered his face and he pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked away.

“I’m sorry, Cas. Maybe it’s better if I don’t sleep with you.”

Then he left, bathroom door slamming behind him. Casper sat up, hand already closing around his cock, wet with spit.

Incredible. He actually blamed himself for that.

The image of it not stopping oozed through Casper’s mind as he touched himself, the intensity building with each new level of shuddering heat. Panting and gasping and curled around the aching knot of pleasure, Casper finally came with Cain’s face plastered across his mind.

He left the splattered jizz on the bed. A little kiss on the cheek for mister psycho to find. Maybe he’d scoop it up and put it in a vial. Was he that kind of crazy? The cold air tickled Casper’s skin as he strolled naked through the halls back to his room for a shower. As he passed beneath the vaulted arches and breathtaking snatches of view, he hummed a song he loved but hadn’t heard in months.

Yeah, the ghoul really did always know what was best for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can imagine this description as nothing but the eyes emoji
> 
> Cain's not happy though. Perhaps some repercussions next chapter...
> 
> Thanks for reading! Don't forget to hit the kudos button, and if you wanna leave a comment, I'm always happy to hear what you have to say!


	22. Sulking

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” Casper said to the ghoul. “Looks like you’ve made this like a gazillion times harder.”

Stretched out on the long hallway runner, the ghoul pouted and kicked its legs in the air like it was some teenage girl baby-talking her crush on the phone. Casper had been huddled outside Cain’s study for about an hour now, and he’d finished the end of the book he’d brought with him which left him with fuck all to do but watch the ghoul roll about on the floor like a puppy. And that thing made a real ugly puppy.

The ticking of a grandfather clock tapped down the hall, footsteps that walked for an eternity but never went anywhere at all, and outside of that eternal march, the house echoed empty. Silent. The hallway made a hollow throat that could never scream.

Since the incident the other morning – the ‘ _hey, this guy probably would’ve been a damn good lay if he didn’t – y’know – kidnap me’_ incident – Casper hadn’t seen Cain for almost three days. When he went to his room that night, the handle just rattled, _locked_. Seemed like the dick was avoiding him.

His study was locked during the day the next day, and Casper didn’t see him at the table at mealtimes, and that nut was _religious_ about his mealtimes. The bedroom had been unlocked the next night, but it’d been starry skies and gaping corners and shit all else including Cain himself. He hadn’t been _anywhere_ , and when Casper tracked down R2, the little sorcerous construct that Casper had heard Cain talking to the day he tried to escape – and really, what kind of nerd named his magic butler after R2D2 – the little thing had just spun around in a circle and puffed a hazy black and glimmering blue question mark above its head when Casper asked where Cain was.

So Cain had gone out. Wouldn’t that be nice. _Going out._

Dragging his feet, Casper had trudged back upstairs and curled up in Cain’s bed beneath the covers. Made a nest of the duvet and all the stupidly fluffy pillows. Did cockroaches make nests? Probably to hold all their gross cockroach-y eggs. Yuck. But this nest wasn’t bug egg-y and made of garbage and cigarette butts and the scrapings from the inside of walls. It smelt like vanilla and pine and snowfall. Like Cain.

He wasn’t there in the morning either, but by mid-afternoon, R2 led him to the locked study instead of sprouting a question mark, so Casper had settled down outside to wait. He tried his hardest to read and not think about how antsy Cain avoiding him made him, and to ignore the ghoul scratching at the door. It had worked too well and now he had nothing to do _but_ think about it. At least the ghoul had stopped scratching like some scabby lost cat.

 _Get up and piss off then, Roach. Get a new book and read outside and be glad the dick’s sulking._ Like seriously, how much of a worm did that make him? He could’ve been relaxing, but he’d spent the whole time drifting between these big grand rooms like some Lady in White, except y’know, a ghoul in black rather than a dead girl.

Groaning, Casper knocked his head back against the wall and then climbed to his feet. The door handle still didn’t turn when he tried it, so he knocked.

Nothing.

_Is he seriously going to ignore me knocking too? Did I upset him that much?_

Casper glared at the ghoul and banged on the door. “Cain! R2 told me you’re in there. Stop ignoring me.”

Total silence.

_For fuck’s sake._

“Cain, let me in! It’s been like three days now, I mi—” Casper bit off the word. His stomach dropped. _Oh my god, I wasn’t going to say that. No way._ Alright, fuck the knocking then. If that prick wanted to sulk, then—

The locked clicked and Casper took a step back as the door cracked open.

Honestly, he’d been expecting the haggard-face broken-man look he always got with Jack. Unshaved, unshowered, gaunt cheeks and dark circles. Acrid stench of booze rolling off him. Clothes not changed and sometimes spattered with a bit of blood. That sort of thing.

Not that Cain looked sparkling, eyes were duller than Casper had ever seen and rather than the usually impeccable grooming, everything was a bit … ruffled, but he did look fresh, and that was, well, refreshing. Just _seeing_ Jack after they argued made Casper feel guilty even if Jack had just flipped on him over laughing at some guy’s joke and it wasn’t Casper’s fault in the slightest.

Sighing, Cain leant against the doorframe, one arm above his head and the other holding the door only just wide enough to frame his body. “Casper.” His lips took a sad sort of downturn as he spoke Casper’s name, and he didn’t follow with anything else.

Casper crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve been busy.” Cain’s voice stayed flat and inflectionless. “Nothing more.”

God, he _was_ sulking. _The universe weeps for your plight, oh great martyr of the lost boys_. It really was pathetic. “You can’t kidnap me then ignore me. That’s just beyond stupid.”

Cain raised his eyebrows, and then, with a sardonic twist of his lips, he pushed the door open and spread his hands. “Come in then.”

And didn’t that sound welcoming. The study beyond also looked … normal. No smashed glass or anything like that. Was he even annoyed? Surely there’d be at least some kind of wasting anguish or rage if Casper had pissed him off enough to stay away for three fucking days. Unless…

Well, he was just a nut, wasn’t he? And psychosis must be oh so fickle.

Cold, spindly spiders cartwheeled down Casper’s spine as he slipped past Cain into the study, feet padding across the thick rug. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. The door shut behind him and Cain lingered there, hand on the doorknob and his forehead resting against the mahogany frame. Something at the back of his neck caught Casper’s eye, just behind his ear almost hidden from view.

“Is that fucking blood on your neck?” _Oh for fuck’s sake, Roach Boy._ As soon as the words left his lips, Casper clapped his hands to his mouth, eyes flying wide, and Cain’s hand twitched up to his ear as he turned around.

“I—” His fingers met what must be a hard crust of blood to run that dark against his skin, and his eyes widened too, a grimace settling in on his lips. “Oh, that. I—I, ah … cut myself. Shaving, I think. Didn’t realise it was so bad…”

Shaving behind his ear. Well, he did have an impeccably sharp hairline but seriously. Looked like Cain thought the same by the way he rolled his eyes back and pinched the bridge of his nose. Casper nodded anyway, putting his hands behind his back and batting his eyes. Ghoulish, innocent Roach Boy rocking back on his heels. _Nothing to see here, mister psycho nutjob._ “Looks nasty.”

“Oh, it was,” Cain muttered, “believe me.”

 _Fucking shitballs._ That was someone else’s blood. Casper smiled and sidled over to the bookcase. The textures of the covers cycled under his trembling finger: rough, smooth, leather, vellum. His heart pounded against his ribs, but hey, he made a living pretending this shit didn’t scare him.

“Where were you last night? I couldn’t find you.”

“Business, Casper. I told you.”

Well this fucking rich boy sure wasn’t doing the same business as Jack was to be coming back bloody. Unless he was a professional hitman. God, Casper hadn’t asked what his _business_ was, had he? Probably wasn’t anything more than a trust fund baby, and business was just a complete lie anyway. So not only did his crazy involve obsessive fixation, but he hurt people too. Casper knew which one of those he preferred, although hey, at least his one wasn’t certain death. Only _almost_ certain.

_Positive attitude, Roach Boy. That therapist I always should’ve seen would be so proud._

## 26**

Biting his lip, Casper turned from the bookshelf. Cain had leant against the desk, fingers massaging his temple. The ghoul squatted behind him atop drifts of paperwork, lapping at the last flakes of the dried blood on his neck. Gross. Fucking degenerate couldn’t even stick to the fresh stuff. Now Casper looked closer, there was another patch just poking out from under his shirt sleeve on the back of Cain’s elbow.

The meeting of their gazes prompted Cain out of his glum staring. He straightened. The crack of his neck cut through the silence and he rubbed it with a grimace. “What do you want, Casper? I’m busy.”

Ouch. _And shame on you for that being ouch at all, you worm._ Casper should really just leave. This was so fucking stupid, and Cain clearly didn’t give a shit at all.

It was the forcing himself on Cain, wasn’t it? Not a pure little lost boy anymore. Just a fucking whore. Fuck, he should have felt like a whore after doing that. It was gross. _Repulsive._ A far too familiar nausea twisted through Casper’s gut, the hand of shame pushing his head into the stinking dirt. It came like breathing, but so much worse because it had … god, he hadn’t felt like this in days now. But he should have. He deserved to feel this crawling on his skin because he deserved to be treated that way. He’d shown himself that now, hadn’t he? Even mister fucking obsessive nut thought Casper was too dirty to waste his time on.

Casper couldn’t quite lift his voice above the creaking whisper as he spoke to the floor. “I’m sorry.” He picked at his nail, a sting lifting as he found rough skin to peel at. “About the other day. I’m—I’m just—”

“Cas…” A sigh in that voice, and just the touch of someone else’s words was enough to slaughter his just as they stumbled out the kiddie pen, half-born good intentions ground to a bloodbath of rot and failure. One just like the entirety of him. “Please don’t apologise. I’m the one who’s sorry, love. I didn’t—I should never have touched you like that. I know damn well you don’t want me to, and you _told_ me you didn’t want me to, and I—I just lost it. I don’t think you should sleep with me anymore, Cas. I don’t want to hurt you. In any way.”

 _Fuck._ Casper ripped the piece of skin off his nail, gritting his teeth at the sting. Cain probably looked even more fucking dejected than Casper did now – all slumped shoulders and his hair hanging in a cropped curtain before his bowed head. Stupid ghoul just rubbed its face against Cain’s neck making soft noises in its throat like this wasn’t _its_ idea anyway.

Some uncomfortable tightness encased Casper’s chest. Not like it was any good with Cain feeling miserable and not talking to Casper. That wouldn’t get him anywhere. That was it, right? Casper curled his toes in the soft rug as he forced the croak up his throat.

“It’s not your fault.” Cain’s shoulders twitched and he lifted his head just enough to frown at Casper. “That’s what I was trying to do. I’m just—I’m just really fucked up, I’m sorry.”

“You—” Cain’s frown deepened and his fingers made that twist again, thumb running along the far side of his ring finger. “I thought I—”

“You didn’t do anything I wasn’t trying to get you to do.”

Some of the colour drained out of Cain’s cheeks, a pallid undertone sitting sickly in his cheeks. His lips moved, no sound, and again he dragged his thumb across his ring finger, back and forth. Was that the crooked one? Casper hadn’t paid much attention to it other than to note that where all his fingers were perfectly straight, that one was bent a bit off at each knuckle and bowed through the whole length.

“I told you to stop.” A deep fissure of confusion ran through his voice, cracking it down the middle. “I—I thought I’d woken up just—”

Casper swallowed hard and scuffed his foot against the floor. “No, that was me. Seemed like—”

“Like I wouldn’t mind?” Casper flinched at the cut of Cain’s voice, one that ran deeper because that hadn’t crossed his mind at all. _Seemed like it’d be fun for Roach Boy to get gropey to make you get rapey._ How fucked up was he? Cain looked at him exactly the same way he’d be looking at himself now. Made him fucking sick. “Well, I bloody well did. I told you before I didn’t want to have sex with you, Cas. Twice. And again then.”

“I—I thought—”

“You’re not the only fucking one fucked up about sex, Cas, and maybe I’m fucking keeping you here, but I’d _never_ bloody wake you up groping you. I won’t fuck you because I know damn fucking well how fucked it is even if you’re acting like you want to, and I _still_ feel like that. I feel absolutely sick with myself.”

God, he couldn’t breathe. His mind reeled, struggling with these blocks Cain had just dumped on him, a truckload of them all chipped and battered. They all had a hole they fit in but there was a billion different fucking holes and he couldn’t tell where they went. “Cain.” Cracked. Casper cleared his throat and whet his lips with a flicker of his tongue. “Cain, I—"

“Just piss off, Cas. Just bloody leave me alone, alright?”

And he should. He really should. If this fucking nut wanted him to leave then he damn well should, shouldn’t he? But his feet wouldn’t move. Every time he’d woken up to one of those overnights groping him, he’d wanted to scream even though they were allowed. And he rolled over and laughed and fucked them anyway even though he just wanted to scratch their eyes out and crunch the fingers off those slithering hands between his teeth. Even Jack. Sometimes when he woke up to Jack groping him these days, the hands belonged to some sweaty, crooning stranger and Casper only stifled the cry because it felt like the place he was supposed to be.

This was different, but…

_You’re not the only fucking one fucked up about sex._

Cain’s words made him feel filthy, and not in a familiar way.

Casper took a deep shuddering breath and crept across the carpet to Cain whose face was hidden, buried away in his hands. “Cain?”

“I told you to go away.”

God this was so stupid. Look how messed up he was that he managed to make his fucking psycho kidnapper feel violated. Why should Casper feel bad about making him feel like he’d treated him badly?

Because Cain had told him to stop, no matter the reasons, and Casper of everyone should know better than that.

Casper slipped between Cain’s legs and pulled his hands away from his face. His skin was so cold. The heat swelling from the crackling hearth chased out the ice, but it was still wrong. The way a hot drink left on the side too long can go colder than the summer day around it. “Cain, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, I’m just—” A shuddering breath, and he pressed his forehead against Cain’s taut hands. A cool salve against the nauseating heat. His voice cracked as he spoke. “I’m really, really fucked up. Like you have _no_ idea how messed up I am, and I really, really shouldn’t have done that. You’re right I don’t really want it, but I—I don’t know, like maybe it’s some validation thing. Maybe that’s why I fuck myself up like this when I could just—just fucking deal drugs or something, I don’t know, but I’m sorry.”

Slow, Cain twisted his wrists free of Casper’s hands. For a moment, his heart dropped, but then Cain twined their fingers together instead, squeezing Casper’s hands tight even if he didn’t yet show his face, just shifted so his forehead rested on Casper’s shoulder.

“I’d never forgive myself if I did that to you, Cas. I’m already never going to forgive myself, but _that—_ ” A shudder ran through Cain, hands spasming tight on Casper’s. “I just want to give you a place to feel safe, love. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“You have.”

Cain’s head snapped up, his eyes wide and wet around the edges. “What?”

 _It’s like that, is it, Roach?_ Casper pursed his lips and looked down at their clasped hands. Maybe it was like that, but it was damn hard to make himself say it the second time. _All part of the master plan though, ain’t it, Roach? All part of the game._ Felt too damn honest for the game. The line was already only a murkier grey amongst the fog. _But it’s got to feel real to him too._ As long as Casper kept his head and remembered the end, how much did it matter if that line smeared out of existence?

“I feel safe here,” Casper whispered. “With you. I—I fucking hate you, but it’s—it’s been so long. Since I felt safe. At peace.”

“Cas…” So thick that word, and it put a flush of warmth through his chest as Cain slipped his arms around his waist and pulled him in close.

“I didn’t have any nightmares while I slept with you,” Casper whispered.

“No… No, you didn’t. I didn’t notice…”

“I slept on your bed last night because it felt safer than mine. I’m sorry I fucked it up, I just want to sleep with you again. I want to wake up with you properly like … like after I—after I tried—you know, after I did that. And you were holding me and singing to me and—and it was so, so nice. I thought I’d woken up in heaven, you know?”

A wet sound almost like a sob choked up Cain’s throat. He buried his face in Casper’s hair and the dampness of tears touched Casper’s scalp. Cain didn’t say anything. For a long time, neither of them did and Casper tried to make himself forget all the horrible things that had gone in between and pretend it was that night outside his flat again and instead of leaving, Cain had come upstairs with him and warmed up his food and held him in the dark until he fell to sleep. He pretended he’d told Jack to fuck off and gone on that date, and it had been as magical as the night above the city and they’d gone on and fallen in love and Cain had stolen him away the right way, away from that life so they could live out their days blissfully happy together.

But it wasn’t that way, and Casper was a fucking mess and it never would have been. If Cain hadn’t kidnapped him on the bridge, maybe he’d have fallen in with him for a week or two but as soon as Jack came back to his flat, he’d be gone.

After what felt like an age, Cain sighed against his ear. Almost warm now and so lovely against his skin, as was the tickle of the words that followed it. “Do you want dinner, love? I … must admit I haven’t really eaten much recently.”

Funny that. Casper had eaten more here than he ever had. Not a huge amount but regularly and healthily. R2 was a good cook for a mutating shape of magical energy. Casper smiled and rubbed his cheek against Cain’s chest. “Were you sulking?”

“I was _not_ sulking!”

“You were sulking. Also—” Casper eased back and lifted Cain’s arm up, tugging the sleeve back from his elbow. The streak of blood extended well up the back of his arm, flaking and crusted. “Looks like someone didn’t turn out so well for it.”

“What?” Cain twisted his arm up, and as soon as he caught sight of the blood, he groaned. “Oh for _fuck’s_ — That’s not—"

“Someone else’s blood?”

“It’s not!”

Alright, that was stupidly adorable. Grinning, Casper lifted Cain’s arm and pressed a kiss to the streak of blood, flickering a glare up to the ghoul as he did. The thing better notice he wasn’t licking it like a fucking miscarriage. The ghoul hunkered down and licked it anyway, its long tongue twitching against Casper’s lip.

“So you were sulking and that’s someone else’s blood.” Casper glanced up at him with a grin. “Let’s go get dinner.”

And there were those eyes again. The ones with the sun trapped in the brightness of them, all smitten awe. Devouring. That told Casper two things: he’d done something violent to get it there, and whatever it was, it got his blood racing thinking Casper might like it just as much as he did. He knew that look very well. Jack got it all the damn time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he did. He knew that look very well. Jack got it all the damn time.
> 
> \-----------------
> 
> This one was super endearing to go back and read because Cassie's so cheerful! But ... *looks at the long road to the resolution and sighs* if only it'd last...
> 
> I'm weighing up whether this sequence fits tone-wise better after the next arc I have, but it's pretty nailed in time-wise so eh, that's a job for another time. Ups and downs make a story, anyway ... right?
> 
> And maybe Cain's Mr Psycho Nutjob, but who said Cassie wasn't as well? They're so cute together when Cassie's being nice.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!


	23. Vertigo

Casper held Cain’s hand all the way to the breakfast nook, and Cain looked like he was just about floating the whole damn way. Maybe he’d just float right on off through the ceiling and leave Casper to this little haven in peace, but that’d be way too much good karma. Plus, he didn’t like to think about how agitated he’d gotten when Cain wasn’t there whenever he went looking for him. Call it co-dependency, like he needed more personality flaws. It was just this pretend getting to him, but he’d keep his head where it mattered.

The smell of cooking already suffused the kitchen, something nutty and rich like Chinese. Every single meal Casper had eaten here had been vegetarian without him even asking. Looked like obsessive nut here at least remembered what he liked to eat.

Jack never really did.

They settled on either side of the solid table. Casper’s chair, when it was daylight, peered out on cascading lilac flowers and twisting wisteria branches. Butterflies and bees and all sorts of other insects always fluttered between the petals and the soft sunlight turned it into a pastel dream. For now, though, there were only blurred silhouettes against a dusky blue sky, the first stars just starting to stud the expanse with their sparkling brilliance.

The little sprite was there – R2. It was the shape of a spinning top crossed with a robot, but all in blocky black material. The material was like shell but too dark, too thick, slickly reflective and so otherworldly that Casper had studied it for hours trying to find a better comparison. Wispy blue light drifted around it, and sparks more like crystalline dust than electricity fluttered out of its joints as it moved.

R2 brought them both coffees – the best coffee Casper had ever had, all dark and earthy and full without the sharp bitterness of everything else he’d ever drunk – and Casper stirred the black liquid absently while he rested his head on his hand and stared up at the stars.

“I love seeing the stars like this,” Casper said.

Soft and doe-eyed, Cain mimicked Casper’s position, but Cain only had eyes for him. “I know you do. Why else do you think I got this awful place?”

Casper blinked and tore his eyes from the window. “What?”

“This—” Cain flitted his fingers through the air— “I wanted somewhere big enough to give you space, but I remembered what you said when we … talked. You said you wanted to see the stars and you wished everywhere was open and green and real. I mean I know the house isn’t real. All this extravagance is so disgustingly fake I wish I could gut the place, but outside, that’s real, and the window in my room – I had one in my last house, and I think I just about managed to bodge together the building work with sorcery. I knew you’d love being able to look at the stars like that.”

And Casper wasn’t even going to touch on the sheer thoughtfulness. No, that was all getting shut up and away and forgotten about. It made his head spin so much he felt sick, and in the grasping of his mind, he settled on one comment and turned it spiteful. “And how many other mes liked seeing the stars and that fucking crap?”

Sure didn’t expect that wide smirk on Cain’s lips, a hint of teeth showing between his lips. “None. Well, you always loved the stars, but I don’t think any version of you has ever actually hated the city so much. It’s … It’s the only thing I do to find you. I go there. The one time I didn’t bloody go, I actually—” Cain laughed, his eyes sliding to the window and the great expanse of the sky beyond.

_Shut up._

He just kept talking and each soft word fell into an abyss between Casper’s ears, one that grew and grew and grew and it swallowed him, his brain and his tongue and his lungs and his guts, all of him.

“It’s such a stupid story.” Cain sat back in his chair and tipped his head back, the shadows creeping out of his hair to swallow the edges of his face. “There was this woman I knew, and—and—well it doesn’t matter exactly what, but I just woke up there one day in a hotel—”

_Shut up._

“—and I got my stuff together ready to piss right off and I walked out of the building and I walked straight into you going down the stairs. You had a mohawk that time, and your boyfriend punched me in the face. I ... I kept seeing you everywhere then.” Cain laughed and shook his head. He smiled, but there was something missing behind it – the hollowness of tragedy. Casper’s heart thudded. He'd forgotten how to breathe. “The single bloody you I’ve ever met that travelled, isn’t that crazy?”

_Shut up. Shut up. Shut up._

“The point is every single life you always find yourself there. But every time I’ve actually … gotten to know you, you’d never want to live anywhere else. It’s … fascinating that you’re different.”

Just when he'd been settling in and now Cain went and talked his fucking crazy deep enough to make him sick. Worse, it didn’t _fit_. Not with the fixated psycho murderer talk. Almost, but didn't enough that it gave him fucking vertigo thinking how much better it fit if it was all true. Everything he said. Everything he did.

“I don’t want to hear this.” The voice sounded a thousand miles away, some other Casper speaking those words cloaked behind the ringing that whined between his ears. This Casper spiralled in freefall and even though the land below him was a paradise, it was still going to smash him to a fucking smear when he hit.

It had to fit crazy psycho stalker. It _did_. It had to.

That was fucking that. It did. Casper wasn’t a fucking puppet in the hands of fate that kept shoving them together. He wasn’t some fucking Juliet to his Romeo that'd get all love at first sight with him every life he led. The only reason he fucking fell for it was because Cain was so assured that he was already in love with Casper that he treated him better than anyone else had in his miserable life.

Fate wasn’t fucking real. The world was a messy smear of chaos and this was Casper's slice of it. Everything he'd ever dreamed of – magic and freedom and escape and a man who loved him like a fucking romance movie – all twisted into horrorshow hell.

Casper’s feet caught under him getting up, and the tiles smashed into his knees and elbows hard enough to make him gag. Cain's chair clattered, but it all sounded behind a concrete wall, not part of this world. The hand that settled on his shoulder belonged to a stranger and Casper almost vomited as he threw it off and staggered to his feet.

Did Cain call after him as he ran down the corridor, or was that just a dream? A memory?

_He feels so familiar. Why does he feel so fucking familiar?_

The heavens opened above him with a punch of cold through his whole body. His t-shirt didn't give an inch of resistance to the howling wind as he sprinted down through the grounds. Not out. Never out. But that one spot down by the stream where the trees blocked off the house, and by there, he could stand and pretend all that existed was the hills rolling out before him to the horizon.

Cain said he’d gotten this place for Casper, but that was stupid. No one could get a fucking house in like a day. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Gasping, shuddering, Casper fell to his knees by the stream and wrapped his arms around himself. He turned his face up to the stars and screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I missed yesterday's update to anyone who was waiting on it! Life gets in the way (and this is a short one too, yikes)
> 
> Ups and downs, it's all ups and downs. Cain flaunts the psycho too easily and Cas doesn't wanna hear it. But he probably should've guessed that. 
> 
> A little timeskip next chapter (only a little one) - poor old Cain doesn't follow out this time (I had some lil head canon thing about him bringing cassie a tent, but it was a bit clunky to write so you can all just imagine that ;))
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!! <3


	24. Hollow

In the rain, the hills outside this manor turned not grey, but a deep, aching green. The colour of forests, pine needles dancing above your head and the world so distant that it forgot you, a twinkle in the air that slipped your eye and you’ve stepped through a glamour into a world of faerie and forever.

From his window, Casper had watched the sheets of rain lash across the rolling hills, the clouds physical things that stewed inches above his head, and now that the downpour had, with a gasp, given up its fury, he huddled at the edge of a copse of trees that straddled a stream and tried to make himself feel something other than this aching chasm that ran through the very centre of him.

It smelt so lovely, fresh and sweet on his tongue, but it could be ash for all the joy it gave him. The moan of the wind carried a song, one of chittering insects and the trilling of birds. The dew glimmered like fairy lights between the distant hills as the first golden kisses of sun trailed across the landscape, but this weight on his mind crushed it all to black. He’d worn a coat out, some huge puffy black thing and a beanie tugged over his head, but he sort of wished he hadn’t. Maybe the cold would make him feel something, slap him out of this funk he’d been stuck in for days.

Had it been days? It could have been a year, twisting through nothingness and the same minute over and over and over again.

Usually it wouldn’t matter. Usually he’d have been drowning in dope by now, but he didn’t have that. He didn’t have anything. Just cigarettes and a monster swallowing his mind and tearing off hunks of his flesh.

Cain had even locked up the last of the whiskey after Casper had gotten blackout drunk the third night in a row. Like the _cunt_ had any right to dictate whether Casper could get himself fucked up or not.

Like Cain had any right to look at Casper curled up in bed while the clock frowned four in the afternoon, heartbreak a fissure running through every inch of him. But enough venom and even Cain’s concern had ground down, broke on an acerbic word with no meaning and the door slammed shut behind him.

Half an hour after that, R2 had brought a hot chocolate and some cake. Casper had taken it down to the study and thrown it at Cain, china shattering across his paper-strewn desk and the sweet liquid arcing across his face and the wall behind him.

It hadn’t even been funny. That was the saddest part. All it did was stoke the simmering red rage that always rose when enough of himself had been torn away.

How was he meant to be happy anyway? He was stuck in a five-acre prison for the rest of his miserable fucking life. It’d be better if Cain hated him, if he did sick things to him and left Casper a battered, tortured husk in a dark cell. At least it’d be real. At least he wouldn’t have to sit behind a screen of trees and look at everything he could never have. The delusion, the falseness, it gnawed at his mind and drove skewers into his chest because every moment was a reminder that this was forever: everything he’d ever wanted twisted into everything he’d ever deserved. Hell.

And somehow it wasn’t that which left him like this. The excuse rung hollow as this carved out space inside his chest. The monster lived within him. It was the ghoul that lurked in the trees behind him, chattering and hissing and spitting all these foul things.

Over the gurgle of the stream and the screaming wind, Casper didn’t hear Cain’s footsteps. The long, sodden grass swallowed the sound and it was only the purposeful snap of a twig that drew Casper’s eyes around. He wore boots and joggers, and looked both startlingly unlike himself and, in that clean white shirt, almost like a satire of himself. It drew a hoarse laugh from Casper’s throat.

Casper wasn’t sure if there was feeling behind it. He turned back to the landscape with all the surliness weighing heavy on his face again. The wind nipped at his chapped lips and lifted an ache through his cheekbones. Casper took a deep breath of the air. It smelt so fucking pretty but he still couldn’t feel a thing.

“It’s nice down here,” Cain said once he stood beside Casper, the wind throwing the untucked tails of his shirt behind him. Psycho looked like he’d done it up right quick, only the middle ones holding the length together. “You come down here a lot, don’t you? Would you like a chair?”

Casper almost ignored him, but something sharp lifted the tip of his tongue. No point in resisting it. Cain deserved it. “You’d get down on your hands and knees and play furniture for me if I asked pretty. Right, you pathetic fucking cuck?”

Cain’s eyes pressed closed, a tightness spasming through his jaw. A little shudder ran through him, but it wasn’t the Arctic bite of the wind. Casper couldn’t even make himself enjoy it.

A note of desperation wrought Cain’s voice now. His hands were stuck deep in his pockets, but the clench of his fists showed through the fitted fabric. “What can I do, Cas? I hate seeing you like this, love. There has to be something I can do.”

And it was so fucking stupid that Casper laughed. A laugh that made Cain flinch. “Do you even want the answer to that?”

“Perhaps I would if I was at all convinced it would make you better, but I’m not. In fact, I’m certain it won’t.”

“And who gives you the fucking right to decide?”

Never mind that it was true. Call him whatever you like, but even if he was a pathetic, vile roach, he was self-aware.

Casper turned away from Cain and hunched deeper over the knees he had pulled up to his chest. He shook his hands out the pockets of his jacket and wrapped his arms around his knees. After the nests of warmth, the cold gnawed at his fingers with short, blunt teeth made of ice.

What did he want?

Oh, just exactly what he always wanted.

Casper teased the next words out on his tongue, a grin stretching wan across his face with each scratching word. Because _this_ was the answer. He could already feel the heat slipping through his veins. “I want some dope.”

“No.”

The word slapped him. Casper twisted around, scrambling up to his feet. The grass slipped under his boot and he almost fell, smack on his face in the wet earth. Wouldn’t that be fucking hilarious? Splat, Roach Boy painted brown and plastered green.

Raindrops off the tree leaves spattered across his cheeks as he snarled into the wind. At Cain, brooding against the wuthering backdrop of the gardens, all crusted and weathered by winter. Glacial, the gale made a billowing stream of his shirt, the front parting just above his joggers to bare his stomach and the collar thrown harshly wide, almost past his shoulders, collarbones like knives against pale skin.

There was a resolution to Cain’s dark expression, but like resolution had ever stopped this raking anger.

“What do you fucking mean no?” Casper snarled. “Get—”

A dark twist of humour lifted Cain’s mouth. He didn’t turn from the hills beyond the wards to face Casper. “I would’ve thought you capable of understanding a denial when you—”

Casper lurched forward a step, driving his finger at Cain’s side, his voice tight and high like shattering glass. “Shut up! You fucking promised me! You said if I wanted dope, you’d fucking get me—”

“I lied.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have this little running joke with myself that Cain never wears anything but stupid expensive black slacks and a white shirt (one I always imagine more like the one Howl wears than a straight-edge business one) and circulates about fifteen of each. He only owns joggers because once someone taught him how to skateboard and told him he couldn’t learn if he looked like a yuppie.


	25. Martyr of the Lost Boys

“I lied.”

That loving way Cain caressed the word with his tongue sniped past the howling wind and all of Casper’s rage. If he spoke Casper’s name like a prayer, this concept spilt from his lips the way you whispered in your lover’s ear as you drew a knife across their skin.

Casper choked on it. “ _What?_ ”

“I lied. Of course I’m not buying you heroin. How bloody soft do you think I am?”

“Very.” A lie hissed sharp into the breeze, one that only lifted one corner of Cain’s mouth.

Like Casper could keep spitting venom when Cain stood there all matter-of-fact _fuck you, Roach_. But there had to be some sly savagery he could pry from his memories. Something to make Cain cringe the same way Casper’s mind moaned out its grief with claws dragging skin from its ghoulish face.

The cold groped around his collar and raked nails over his cheeks, and he trembled with it. The trees beside him groaned, shuddering as they heaved off the weight of the water that made graves of their leaves.

Ah, that was it. Casper grinned. A horrible grin that wound through the scars in his cheek and made knots of them, and flashed the black gap in his teeth.

“What is it, nutjob?” The croaking bile in the words that finally drew Cain’s eyes, and each one that Casper spoke, another inch of life shuttered away from Cain’s face until all that was left was an iron shell. “You said you know how bad it is, right? Which one was it that you forced to get clean? Which one begged you one too many times for just another hit, made that big show of how much he could take and made you leave him alone? I bet it was the first one – something had to get you hooked on boys like me. I bet it fucking _broke_ you.

“How long did it take you to go up there, huh? Did his corpse stink when you found it? Did you kiss it anyway through all that vomit and rot? Hey,” Casper giggled, a high hysterical sound, “maybe you even _fucked_ it, at least now he couldn’t say—”

“If one more word comes out your fucking mouth, Casper, I don’t give a shit who you are or why you’re here, I’m going to smack you and you’re going to bloody well deserve it.”

He didn’t look like Cain anymore, standing there with his hair streaming back from his face – not the pathetic, pandering Cain that Casper had come to know. The only trace of emotion was the rigidity of his jaw and the sickness in his eyes, and he looked like the devil who had whispered to Casper on the bridge, the god who raised black night around him and blotted out the sun.

Seeing it put a thrill in him. A muted one, a short spear from the base of his spine to his stomach, tightening in his thighs, but it was there. _Life._ The electric spark that kicked his corpse into staggering motion. Grinning, Casper took the steps between them slow and purposeful until he stood toe-to-toe with Cain. The wind whipped the overlong edges of his hair against his forehead and ears. Gusts of it buffeted him into the chill pressure surrounding Cain as if those ancient moans were pleads for Casper to fall into his arms.

Cain looked down. Oh, and he made a _point_ of looking down, eyebrow raised, a hooded gaze down his nose as if Casper was nothing more than a roach beneath his boot. Something railed against Casper’s ribs, and no part of him wanted to call that gasping, thumping, shrivelled thing his heart, but it thundered there, seizing, as Casper gathered the words on his tongue.

“I bet he was laughing when he died because at least he finally got away from you and all your fucking _poison_. I bet it was your fucking fault.”

A spasm went through Cain’s features, tight, and oh, it must say volumes for how deep that blade stuck that it showed at all. Casper’s whole body trembled, strung right up to the edge, and the anticipation of Cain’s hand snapping out, the blow to his face or his gut, the shove to the floor and the foot lashed into his side – that anticipation had his breath hitching in his chest, quivering through his very bones.

It didn’t come.

“You’re a foul creature, Casper,” Cain hissed, words as much a part of the wind as reality.

Casper laughed spitefully and shoved Cain in the chest, but he stood against the blow, immovable. Frustration tightened through Casper’s gut and he slapped his palms there again. “Aren’t you going to _hit_ me?”

“No.” Cain’s mouth stretched into the parody of a smirk. “Not when it’s what you want”

“You said you’d give me _anything_ I want, you fucking liar. Don’t I deserve what I want, _daddy?”_ That drew a twitch in Cain’s cheek, the jumping of a muscle pulled bowstring tight. Casper let a giggle spill his lips and he leant in, laid both his palms against Cain’s chest, the shirt a thin barrier between his palms and the cold radiating from Cain's marble chest. “Aren’t I allowed to talk about your pretty little lost boy anyway, daddy? He’s _me_ after all, isn’t he? Surely I can—”

“Stop touching me, Casper.”

 _Oh,_ there was the tension. Casper bore his fingers deeper into Cain’s chest and grinned up at him. “No. I thought you’d love —”

“Right now.”

“—me touching you, _daddy._ That’s what I’m here for, isn’t—”

“Right _fucking_ now, Casper!”

“I’m here,” Casper hissed with his chin pressed against Cain’s chest and his fingers claws in his skin, “because I’m _nothing_ but a fucking ghost to make you feel better that it’s your fault he—”

Rotten cold buffeted Casper back. Not strong enough to throw him from his feet, but it pushed his hands from Cain and forced Casper a stumbled step back. Dickhead went staggering back too, shoulders hunched in and his hand clutched to his throat, but that wasn’t the sorcery – that was all how miserable desperate he was to run away from Casper.

Cain roared at him, all ragged around the edges, and the fearful passion of it burnt in his eyes. “You’re _nothing_ like him, Cas! Fucking _nothing_. You’re a foul, loathsome little beast and he’d fucking hate himself for ever turning out anything like you so don’t you fucking dare talk about—"

Casper screamed right back at him. The volume sliced in his throat, a physical pain against his broken voice, and his rage shattered in the air. “Then why don’t you fucking let me go?”

“Because I still fucking love you!”

Casper stopped. The warm shock threw a blanket across the rage, melting the black knife of his tongue in his mouth, but what followed forced all that feeling down his throat and left him nothing but the dark.

“And,” Cain hissed, “it’s a far worse curse than _anything_ those two have _ever_ inflicted on me because no matter how _vile_ you are, I can’t stop fucking loving you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter gives a little insight into Cain's hang-ups as well, because it ain't just anything that provokes him like this. Has Cassie pushed him a little too far?


	26. Bargaining

At the last two words, Cain’s voice cracked, and he straightened, hands coming up to rub across his face. He stood there like a martyr, shaking shoulders and the wind tearing at his clothes. Made a kid sick. Like everything else hadn’t. Like everything else didn’t gather like black ooze in Casper’s gut and now, the foul mass of it overflowed. It crept up his throat to seep from between his teeth.

This was where he ran away, spat at Cain’s feet and sprinted across the grounds, the petrichor a poison on his tongue and the long grass tangling around his feet. Find a new place to hide away, bury himself in the earth or crawl inside a tree and pray, pray, pray that the ground swallowed him up, and he just _died_ trapped there beneath the soil with his mouth full of dirt.

Dirt which squirmed in prudishness against the touch of his filthy skin.

But the earth only swallowed his feet, and Casper couldn’t move. Hatred boiled in his gut like a physical thing, but this hot, red shame clamped down on his tongue, and he stood in stupefied silence while Cain hunched amongst the howling wind and tortured himself.

Why was he doing this? It was sick. It was sick and stupid. Only that Casper who’d held Cain’s hands and whispered apologies would ever get free. Only that Casper could keep afloat and not drown in this pitch-black tar that consumed him from the inside.

That Casper was a dead, false thing. All that really lived in this shell was the ghoul.

It wasn’t here. He couldn’t see it because he was it and it was him.

When Cain lowered his hands, it wasn’t to tears and heartbreak. His face was dry and implacable, calm but for the sneer curling his lip. All of him was the immovable rock around which the wind howled, impotent, for an eternity while never abrading from him an inch.

“Let’s do this again, shall we, Casper?” Cain said, a flat, black murmur that sounded in Casper’s ears as if it had been whispered against them. “What do you want? And let’s be reasonable this time, hm? You have one ask, so don’t make it a stupid one.”

 _Swallow that spitting poison, Roach Boy._ Psycho looked serious. More backbone there than Casper had ever dreamed, and for the sake of a scratch against this iron he presented, it wasn’t worth missing a chance. Casper’s heart knocked against his ribs and he swallowed around the dryness in his mouth.

His throat hurt. Right down in that weird place that Jack had never been able to understand hurting. The ripping sensation he got when he screamed too hard or long. Casper pressed his lips together and rubbed his hand over his throat.

“Why is this happening to me?”

It was a whisper. His lips barely moved and Cain either didn’t hear or chose to ignore it.

What did he want? _Give me dope. Let me go. Let me die._ No deal this time, Roach Boy. The buzzer sounds but it’s not a happy noise, so what’s the right answer?

Louder, Casper said, “I want to go out.” Not that his voice even scratched above the wind.

Immediately, Cain snorted, the impassive mask turning to one of derisive humour. “Well, look at that, love. Here I’d thought you weren’t bloody stupid, but it looks like—”

“Not _let go_.” Casper bared his teeth and crept closer. Did it as if he was trying to be intimidating with all this five foot not-even-quite-a-half and not just closing the distance for his voice to travel. “Not that that should be stupid, you fucking nut. I wanna go out.”

Cain’s lips tightened. “You are—"

“I’m sick of being in here! It’s the same fucking day over and over and you’re never here and I’m going crazy!”

It wasn’t as if Casper had actually had _friends._ None worth the name, and only a handful that could take it for lack of a better moniker, all of whom he saw exclusively out getting fucked up. But it wasn’t the _point._ It wasn’t about loneliness; it was freedom. So, so many days he’d spent as drifting flotsam on the scum-choked currents of the city streets, and he hated the clamouring noise and the chaos, but sometimes, he stumbled onto something a little more.

A quiet coffee shop, a garden where the overhanging trees muffled the noise, a cat curled up beneath a post box.

Now he was trapped here with one man, some nutcase fucking lunatic, going absolutely cabin fever fucking crazy.

_And let’s not touch on ‘you’re never here’, cretin._

A touch of wetness brushed Casper’s cheek. Good excuse to look away from the knives Cain wielded against him with that gaze. The clouds still brooded low and as Casper turned his face up, another two droplets splashed against his skin. Quicker, they came. Eager to escape the greedy hold of the clouds, but their flight ended only in death dashed against the unforgiving earth. Casper opened his mouth and one broke against his tongue.

Their suicide tasted so sweet.

With a sharp hiss between his teeth, Cain relented. “Fine. You want to go outside? I’ll take you outside. We’ll go back to your flat and get everything I’ve missed, how’s that?”

Casper’s heart lurched. Out. _Out._ The word blazed in his mind like fireworks lit up the outlines of those three splendid letters, and the possibilities smacked him so hard his mind just _stopped._ He hadn’t even been angling for that when he asked, but now it was there and … the city. The crowds and the chaos and the infinite places to get lost. It … It couldn’t actually be that—

A sharp, acerbic laugh slapped him back the other way, into the reality of the wind like knives against his cheeks and Cain’s brooding figure cut against the sky. His lips twisted into something cruel and an unfamiliar darkness lurked behind his eyes.

“I’m not that stupid, before you get any ideas. Pet wants a walk, pet stays on a leash.” And as if to prove a point, a cold beyond all that raked on the winter air curled around Casper’s throat, a breath, a promise, snuffing out the brief candle of hope. “Tomorrow at nine. Take it or leave it, Cas. You’ll get nothing better, especially when you’re being such a foul little _brat._ ”

And with that, he stalked away. Every wind-strewn branch that he passed swept into the air as if whipped up by a tornado and rocketed into the distance in a streak of black malaise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like the boys are going on an outing! What could go wrong...
> 
> One day I might squish these up into longer chapters, but I've been editing these as I can in shorter chunks. Sorry for missing yesterday's updates again everyone!


	27. Deliciously Crimson

Casper was there at nine in the morning. Of course he was. No matter that he had psycho nutjob for company and a leash around his fucking neck, what kind of idiot would he be if he actually turned down a chance to get outside? Maybe something would go wrong. Maybe he’d be able to run. Probably it’d all go smoothly because Cain was like control freak supreme, but it was worth it anyway ‘cause he’d be _outside._

A breath of pollution to freshen his lungs.

Casper was slouched against the front door smoking a cigarette when Cain got there at ten to, and old nutjob actually did a double take seeing him. Totally reasonable seeing as Casper didn’t think he’d ever gotten up early by free will in his life, but he’d woken up at five with a nightmare two hours after getting to sleep so here he was.

Neither of them said a word to each other as Cain lead him to a detached garage. Except when Cain let him in, Casper burst out laughing.

“Didn’t peg you for a sports car guy.”

That deliciously crimson lambo said otherwise. Cain probably would’ve made a joke about that usually, but he just stalked across to wealth-on-wheels and slammed the door behind him when he got in. Casper, for lack of anything else to do, followed.

Cain drove at fifty down the driveway and one-twenty the rest of the way. Traffic seemed to split around him just the way the Red Sea had proffered up its salty bed for Moses, the parting of the waves recreated in stalled cars and violent lane changes. It was the most terrifying and exhilarating car journey of Casper’s life, even if it only got that title for the exhilarating part.

The most terrifying had been when Jack drove them at a hundred down the wrong side of a freeway, screaming angry and so high he couldn’t look straight. Call that the Norns at work that they hadn’t both died, those three sisters stringing out his thread so that he lingered long enough for this fresh hell.

Casper told Cain about the trip with Jack on a barren stretch of road where the needle ticked at one-fifty and the trees went past so thick and fast they smeared. Casper told it with his scratching voice a sardonic whisper amongst the moan of the engine and a grin twisting up his face. Cain didn’t look at him, but the needle edged down and didn’t go above ninety again.

The air inside the car hung black with sulphurous smoke and words that should have gone unsaid.

~*~*~

The sight of the city on the horizon brought a wallowing to Casper’s gut so intense he had to close his eyes. A real strange, shitty feeling that muddled through a list of emotions as long as his arm all churning and bickering together. His skin seared with electricity but everything inside? Inside was a hell encrusted with cold so deep it burnt away your skin. The monoliths on the horizon hauled him in while every inch of himself screamed pleads to run the other way.

No light peeked from behind these ominous clouds, and the towers that clawed at the sky made grey fingers against the bleak horizon, misted at the base by a thin, miasmic smog. Cain had brought them down out of the highlands on the drive, the air thickening as they plunged into the urban valley and drowning him in its rich stink. Now, the clouds that had been breathtakingly physical in their presence high up in the hills were only another layer of hopelessness too distant to be anything but the hood over your head as they lead you to the gallows.

But it was home. It was familiar. It was where he’d pretended that he’d been free.

It was Jack, although that was little more than a corollary.

Casper didn’t open his eyes again until Cain cut the engine, and he opened them to the car park a few blocks away from his building. The one directly outside had been staked out by a bunch of skinheads who would have demanded ‘protection fees’ from Cain the second they heard that sports car purr and then stolen the tyres anyway, potentially even the whole vehicle. Maybe he’d had a similar encounter the first time he came. Casper grinned wan at the cracked concrete wall in front of him. Hopefully.

Cain got out. Casper followed him. As soon as he opened the door, the stink hit him like a physical thing, dove down his throat and wormed up his nose and wrapped his skull all up in the piss and the petrol and the slow death of despair. Home. Purgatory in grey and mildewed green.

The carpark was half-empty, bangers and economy-mobiles and the dull-already show-horses still wearing their owner’s tag blazoned across the back window. One-year-old three-litre beemer. _Hope Dealers XXX: The car of your goddamn dreams and it’ll only cost your soul._

A man in an ill-fitting suit stumbled out the building, walking with the downtrodden, shoe-scraping steps of the defeated, and with a cigarette hanging from his lips, he fumbled with the keys to the car. Over the grumble of the traffic queue shuffling down the road outside, the raucous laughter of three dressing gowned women chatting between their balconies floated down.

Cain frowned around the carpark with his hand on the car door. There was a tightness in his eyes, and it eased only once he’d scanned the vicinity a few times. The moment his sharp eyes met Casper’s malignant glare, a band of cold tightened on Casper’s wrist. Hardly felt like anything in the physical sense, but psychologically? That was a weight. A cartoonish anvil dropped from the sky to smash his skull and all the hope he’d dared harbour into a reddish smear on the pot-holed tarmac. Casper gave it a tug, but even the slight movement toward Cain shortened the tether’s give.

The croak of Casper’s voice barely lifted above the fresh growl of the beemer’s engine as the man finally pulled out of the carpark, but it drew Cain’s eyes anyway. “You know how fucking messed up this is, right?”

That dark gaze pinned Casper, and it was at once surgical in its incision and glazed, a black pool that stopped an inch beneath the surface. A heartbeat; Cain’s lips tightened, and he looked away, turned up the collar of that expensive wool trenchcoat he wore, and headed out of the parking lot. As soon as Cain passed, a yank at Casper’s wrist dragged him forward and he staggered, arm outstretched like a fucking toddler on a leash, to keep up with Cain’s long, brooding woe-is-me strides.

Fucking dick had legs like twice as long as Casper. All this trotting to keep up raised a heat under his collar, and by the time they got out the carpark, his breath caught in his lungs.

Streets down this way weren’t too packed at least. Narrow, the pocked tarmac pavement passed between a one-way side street with enough camber to make your sump cringe and looming terraces set just back from the road, the gardens one and all tiny patches of concrete and weeds. Casper hopped over a spilt binbag and shouldered into the space next to Cain.

“Like, it’s one fucking thing actually keeping me jammed up in that shitty house, but I think this whole delusional kidnapper crap gets like a gazillion times worse with you actually taking me outside on a fucking leash.”

Cain didn’t look at him. Casper hissed between his teeth and shut up. Nutjob didn’t even deserve him wasting his breath, and he sure as fuck didn’t have a lot to waste keeping up with this pace. Fucking smoker lungs were already wheezing on the car fumes, and it wasn’t as if Casper had ever been _fit._ The only kind of fit he managed was bent in half hacking his lungs up coughing fits.

Another few minutes and a twisting side-street passed in deafening silence. Right up until they passed some fuckboy with a flouncy haircut who gaped at Casper’s face the whole length of the goddamn street, a snigger hidden in the press of his lips. The second he got within a metre, edging over to the side of the road to shoulder past Cain, Casper lurched for the guy, gnashing his teeth and hissing. The ghoul did as well, capering and snapping around her ankles.

Fuckboy flinched, disgust splaying across his face, and he didn’t get a second to find his equilibrium before Cain grabbed the loose collar of his coat and yanked him in close. The wind that slid across Casper’s cheeks hadn’t been this cold a moment before, and above the city stink, some heady scent of saccharine rot lifted in the air.

Fuckboy stared, frozen horror writ across his face, at Cain’s blank expression.

“Is there a problem?” Cain asked him, low and smooth.

Fuckboy shook his head.

“Find something else to stare at, you stupid twat.”

With a shove, not much more than a flick of his hand as if it sullied Cain to touch him, he let Fuckboy go. And goddamn, it was hard not to grin as the guy scurried off down the road. The chill fled the air as if Fuckboy carried it on a trail, and for once, the stench of old rubbish seemed fresh against death that had haunted the street a moment ago.

Cain snorted and pushed his hair back into place, but that smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth ruined the chilly facade. Asshole looked way too pleased with himself. His eyes, when they settled on Casper, had a glimmer, but it died the second their eyes met.

 _Look at that – Roach Boy, the death of joy_. A sour taste bloomed on Casper’s tongue and he looked away, eyes trailing over the worn facades. Someone had a planter in this garden, but the flowers were all halfway dead and the curtains tightly shut in the middle of the day.

Considering Nutjob had gone back to the whole dead-eyed surgeon with a rusty scalpel vibe, Casper sure hadn’t expected the arm flung around his shoulders. Hissing, he shoved away, but Cain tightened his hold with iron in the hand that closed on Casper’s upper arm.

“Get your fucking—”

“Behave, Casper.” Cain’s murmur came so silken in his ear that all the struggle fell out of him. Bedroom talk that – enough to put a flutter in his gut, and with it, a memory came unbidden to his mind. Neon gleaming in spilled alcohol and long fingers curling over a chipped glass. “It gets a little crowded around the corner, I wouldn’t want to cause any chaos if this leash proves too short.”

His laughter was as much a hex as a charm.

Casper spoke through gritted teeth. “Let me go.”

“I don’t know why you bother to ask, Cassie.”

This fucking asshole. “Stop fucking touching me then.”

Cain pulled back a little and the arch of his eyebrow came with a flicker of a smirk. The same false innocence slithered through his tone as it must have for the serpent when he presented the apple to Eve. “But how else will they all know that you belong to me?”

And god fucking damn and shame him for the rest of fucking eternity, jailed down in hell until the world went up in flames and then as long after that as hell kept going, because that made him _melt._ Little more than a Casper-shaped puddle of goop and hanging jaw, and every inch of resistance evaporated off the tip of his tongue – all forces to the fresh struggle raging in his pants against this massive fucking boner he was about to pop in the middle of the street.

Or, you know, small boner. The distinction didn’t help.

Cain led him off, and Casper followed, dazed.

“I don’t belong to you.”

“You do in all the ways it matters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asserting his dominance and terrifying random people always puts Cain in a good mood. He's got that scary boi aura.
> 
> Also yes, Cain is a sports car guy. The realisation came to me as they walked into the garage and I couldn't make it change into something respectable like an Rolls Royce no matter how badly it goes with his image *sigh*


	28. Bad F**king Luck

The road took a left, breaking out onto a main vein still far enough from central that the cars screamed down it instead of juddering along in gridlock. More people walked here too, the usual set of cretins and students milling up and down the street. Cain kept tight against the houses and storefronts and everyone they passed diverted a foot around them toward the road. The buffeting wind sent Cain’s long coat splaying out behind him and his hair raked askew against his parting.

Of course the fucker had like the world’s most symmetrical face so he looked gorgeous regardless, but Casper had a ban on thinking about that. One really goddamn difficult to keep to right now, seeing as it was about the only thing his brain had room for besides willing his dick soft.

Cain sure got a lot of looks though – and only half of it was how stupid rich and stupid out of place he looked in this grimy neighbourhood. Meant _Casper_ got looks too. Pity. Revulsion. Confusion. Worst was the fucking jealousy like any of them would want to be leashed to psycho model extraordinaire.

Then like it could actually get worse, a few hundred yards away at the turning onto the street to his building, _who_ fucking steps out onto the main road. Three guesses, and every fucking one of them was Jack and Casper’s stupid bad luck. Up ahead, Jack swaggered down the street like he owned it with a dark fuck-off glower on his face.

Casper’s feet stuttered, but Cain dragged him along. “Cain—”

“And here I thought you weren’t talking to me, love.” A low, dark laugh accompanied the words and Cain leant in, his lips brushing against Casper’s ear. “Whatever changed your mind?”

 _Shit_.

And Jack had to catch Casper’s eyes right while he shuddered at the catch of Cain’s teeth against the shell of his ear. First, Jack squinted, then his jaw dropped, and then anger twisted through the confusion in his face. Casper’s gut just about plummeted out to splatter across the dirty pavement.

Yeah, like this fucking looked good. Had he just been to Casper’s flat? How many times had he been before? _Shit._ Shit, shit, fucking _shit._ Could he tell Jack he’d been kidnapped? Blink Morse code at him? _SMFFS – Save my Filthy Fucking Soul._ Like Jack could do shit to fucking Houdini here anyway.

“Fuck.”

Cain drew back, his steps slowing as he _finally_ clocked Casper dragging his heels. “What?”

As soon as Cain said the word, something stiffened in him. Cold raked through the air and brought with it a breath of that corpse reek.

The hammering cacophony of the cars and the people suffocated in whatever strange thing he did to the world. The arm around Casper’s shoulders drew him in tighter, Cain’s fingers pressing bruising into his skin. That grip kept Casper too close to fully see Cain's face, but those dark eyes scoured the street – a hawk peering out where the serpent should be.

Then his gaze stopped just ahead, and the foulness dropped out of the air. Casper flinched at a blaring foghorn and the thunder of a lorry hammering past a stalled car. The grimy Ford had stopped just beside where he and Cain stood, and its owner cursed, slapping the steering wheel and wrenching at the keys.

“Ah.”

“Fucking right, nutjob.” Casper dug his elbow into Cain’s side, shoving him away. “Fucking let go of me.”

“Hey!” And that hollered shout was Jack’s brain finally readjusting itself to this new reality he faced. Fists clenched, he shoved past a group that stepped in front of him, spitting something back at the complaints, and bulled his way down the street.

He looked like nothing had changed. Going somewhere, or rather coming from somewhere seeing as Jack was never up before twelve unless it meant _still up_. Beat-up leather jacket instead of the staple hoodie, a come-down draped heavy across his stubble-shaded face – incongruent brown against his bleached hair – and the dark circles stamped beneath his eyes – it all said bender going on a few days. The sight of him still dried Casper’s mouth, but this glimpse of his _old_ life…

Cain hadn’t let go, but Casper found himself sinking in against his side.

“I’ll get rid of him, shall I, love?”

Yeah fuck that actually. Casper gave him one last shove and finally, Cain’s arm drew back from his shoulder and Casper stumbled free. The least he could do, right? Tell Jack what was up, that he wasn’t coming back.

Getting free, yeah. Coming back here? He just couldn’t do it. Not with everything he’d had here already sliced off. The fingers that had been pinned beneath a weight now wriggled their bloody stumps while you stared in horror at your mutation of a hand, but now it was loose, you sure as hell jam that amputation back beneath the weight.

Casper took a shuddering breath and glared at Cain, jabbing his finger at him. “You shut the fuck up, alright?”

Cain gave him big, wide eyes and a pout, but that didn’t net him any puppy-dog. More like a goddamn shark playing coy while guts dangled from its teeth. Then Jack was there, his glower pinned on Cain’s shrug and the flash of serpentine innocence across his face.

“Who the fuck is this guy, Cas?”

Damn, his voice sounded rough. “How much have you been fucking smoking?”

Jack’s eyes slid down to Casper, and a catch of softness came into that sneer. “You can’t fucking talk. Jeez, Cas, you alright? Where the fuck you been, baby? I was just at yours.”

Casper shrugged, huddled shoulders with his hands in his pockets. It was hard to look Jack in the eye, but he managed. Just. “Obviously I was out.”

The bell on the shop beside them jingled as a customer shouldered in. _Best One_ , and the old man who worked the desk ID’d Casper no matter how many times he went in for baccy. The thought drew his twitching fingers to his zipper, and he tugged it down, casting his eyes inside his jacket as he dug around in the inside pocket.

There was a long silence from Jack while Casper didn’t look at him, just the rub of the leather and the slight jingle of the chain hooked onto his jeans as the wind nipped at it. Just as Casper’s fingers found the filters where they hid at the bottom of the pocket, Jack groaned.

“Fuck, baby, you ain’t still mad about the other week, are you?”

_Oh, you’ve got to be fucking…_

Casper’s hand froze halfway out his pocket, the pouch clutched in his fist, and then like the way a feather drifts, it fell to his side. Jack had to be kidding. He actually _had_ to be fucking kidding. The sheer understatement about how much fucking anguish had splintered his eggshell skull since _the other week_ was incomprehensible. Even if it had been what Jack had done alone, it was enough to be pissed for eternity.

Out of the white splash across Casper’s mind, something black gathered. A weight settled across his thoughts and his brows drew together into a scowl. Jack still had his lip curled, fists gathered to rocks and his grey eyes stuck on Cain, who stood idly tapping a cigarette out of his packet.

Jack would probably punch Cain before the end of this. How volatile was Cain to anyone not Casper? It’d been getting to the point where Casper might have laughed at that, waved his hand – not at all. But the past few days…

What _exactly_ could that black sorcery do?

Still mad about the other week. That thought staked out its spot in his brain with a flag that was nothing but a visual representation of his screeching mind. The other week when, if Casper hadn’t met mister psycho nutjob kidnapper here, there was about a fifty-fifty chance of him being a fucking blood smear on the road.

If Jack knew, he’d be in tears but … he wasn’t some new testament miracle worker. No splash of the tears of true love on Casper’s ragged guts and brains to put him back together again. Crying over it or not, that’d be that. Fin. The end of Roach Boy because boyfriend – _ex-_ boyfriend – had anger issues up the fucking wazoo. Something twisted in Casper’s gut, pushing at his throat, and he couldn’t tell if it was the prospect of how close he’d come to death or that Jack could _actually_ say something like that to him.

_Not still mad, are you?_

“You’re joking, right?”

Jack startled at the scratch of Casper’s voice. He stared for a moment, then snorted, scratching his fingers back through his hair. “Yeah, figured that’d be it. Just like—” Jack’s eyes flickered, something ugly touching them. “ _Dude,_ fuck off.”

Casper followed his gaze and almost took his own fucking eye out with the straight Cain held out to him, balanced delicate between those long fingers. He had another pinched between smirking lips and both had cherry red embers smoking at the tips.

“Want one?”

Casper filched it. Obscene distortion of his previous life or no, would he _really_ still be Roach Boy if he turned down a free cigarette? Even better, perhaps, that the growing anger rolled off Jack in near palpable waves. He always did get jealous easy, and Cain must be _so_ easy to get jealous over.

And with that sly twitch to the corners of Cain's lips as he watched Jack stew with hooded eyes, he must know that.

Look how easy the melancholy seeing Jack vanished in a wisp of white cigarette smoke. Casper took a long drag. It was a straight, so it tasted like shit and nothing at once, but at least it wasn’t menthol, and at least it soothed this knot winching tight in his mind.

_Not still mad, are you?_

_Yes, Jack fucking darling, I am still fucking mad._ Same as fucking weeks ago, Casper still wanted to tear off this skin, run screaming into the road, and smash his head against the tarmac until a car shattered his fucking skull.

That was the cold fucking truth of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad fuckin' luck or what? Stains is great 'cause it's built on coincidence, so I'm jamming in as much as possible. How do you think this is gonna go with Jack and Cain finally meeting? What *else* could go wrong?
> 
> Now who gave Jack such a bad hangover that he can't kick off and cause trouble while I set the scene (seriously, that boy can't let me craft a conversation when he's really angry). Stay tuned!


	29. Showing Teeth

The crowds streamed past, elbows and shoulders butting up against some invisible wall. People swerved around the three of them as if they stood as a bend in the river of the street. The voices nailed into his skull, laughter the hammer beating them in. Casper’s eye gave a nice little twitch on his next drag, and he could hardly part his gritted teeth to take it.

Jack stared at Cain, ugly twist to his pretty lips. Cain stared back with teeth ruining a smile. Casper drowned.

“Alright—” Jack tore his eyes from Cain and grabbed Casper’s shoulder, and only habit kept Casper from shrieking and throwing it off.

Jack led Casper right up to the window of Best One where racks of lighters and tacky signs hustling the offers of the day loomed over them behind the flimsy glass. At the first step away, the tether yanked Casper’s arm out, a little reminder echoed in the smirk curling Cain’s lips before he let Casper go. Sorry, sorry – _permitted him a length on his leash._

Watching. Always watching.

He could whisper it to Jack right now low enough that Cain wouldn’t hear.

The window wobbled as Jack smacked his hand against it, up above Casper’s head as Jack ducked his closer. The alcohol still came acrid off his breath, but something warm lit his eyes now. It was the tenderness that went with the finger he brushed over Casper’s hollow cheek.

“I’m sorry I ain’t been by sooner, alright? Just like … It’s been a hard few weeks, y’know, and I _did_ drop by but I guess you weren’t home and I guess I didn’t come enough, and that’s my fault. I know that, baby.”

Hard few fucking weeks. If Jack _knew—_

Casper bared his teeth. “Maybe I was just still mad about the other week.”

The touch flinched away, a flash of hurt in Jack’s eyes like that had any fucking right being there. “Are you serious? You—”

Someone stepped out of the shop, shouting loudly back inside in a language Casper didn’t know, and Jack stopped, a sneer gathering through his lips as he tapped his foot, waiting for the customer to leave.

“Cassie?” Smooth, idle, Cain’s voice floated over to them from where he stood, looking all tall and delicious with his coat pushed back behind the hand planted on his hip. The display showed off the lines of his body in those expensive clothes.

Okay, maybe this boner was still drowning sense from his brain.

Funny though, how Casper had forgotten how stupid gorgeous he was, seeing as Cain had kidnapped him and all. Really took the thrill out of those kinds of things, but hey, maybe Casper should at least try some aesthetic and erotic appreciation if he was gonna be jammed up there for eternity.

_Look at you, Roach. You’ve already fucking given up. Find that fucking backbone._

As soon as Casper met his eyes, Cain continued, boredom a blanket across his voice. “Could you get this over with? I have a meeting at twelve.”

All casual like he wasn’t _clearly_ doing that on purpose to provoke exactly that snarled, snag-toothed reaction from Jack. This was going to turn into a fucking mess.

Hand still pressed against the shop window, a tightness going through his fingers that drew them to white-tipped crocodile teeth, Jack pinned an ugly glare on Cain.

Yeah, ugly – the one that tasted sour to see – but still ... something about the cast of Jack’s face winched an ache through Casper’s chest, high and keen digging a pit through his lungs and his throat. The dull grey light that filtered through the clouds was still miserable, but in Jack’s eyes, it shone with breathtaking lambency amongst the pearl river rays. Dreams of laughter overlaid the vicious set of his jaw, and amongst the chaos around them, Casper could almost hear it.

Jack’s laughter was part of the city, and it was the only part that still made Casper’s heart swell.

Casper started as Jack’s hand settled on his hip, and for a moment as that warmth pressed through his jeans, Casper felt a flush of gratitude through his chest. No right being there with Jack just being a jealous, possessive prick, but … he was Casper’s jealous, possessive prick, and if he _knew_ —

Well, Jack had a track record of doing violent things to keep Casper safe.

Shame it wouldn’t do any good this time.

“How about you fuck off anyway, jackass?” Jack spat at Cain. “Dunno if he’s told you, but this is my fucking boyfriend so I’m gonna stand right here and have a nice lil’ chat with him, and you can fuck off to your yuppie cunt meeting without him. Got that, wanker?”

With an arch lift of his eyebrow, Cain tapped his foot. The leash at Casper’s wrist gave a tug, and a slow nausea wrapped through his gut. “Cassie?”

And that wasn’t a question. That was a prompt. Casper swallowed hard, pressing his lips tight against his rising gorge, and took a purposeful step back from Jack. The rasp of his voice hardly rose above the roar of the street. “Ex-boyfriend.”

Jack’s eyes snapped back to him, and he straightened abruptly. “What?”

“Last thing you said to me was we’re over. So, ex-boyfriend, Jack.”

And Casper hated the way Jack’s face crumbled, the way it made his lungs knot and his throat spasm like all the breath in him fled. Like it went to wrap Jack up in warmth and comfort just the way Casper ached to. He hated it, but he hated more the way the anger was always oh, so quick to follow. The searing heat ever made the salve to the wound ripping apart your chest, and Jack, as he slapped his hand against the shop window, burned.

Jack’s mouth worked, anger growing in the show of his teeth while he searched for something to say, and in the brief silence, Cain’s shoes tapped against the floor, edging closer.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding?” Jack raked his fingers back through the sides of his hair, eyes pressing closed and a snarl around his lips. His hand shook. “Nah, Cas, you just—So you’ve gone right out and hooked up with fucking Eton over here? You little fucking—”

“Careful.” Cain’s dark murmur cut easily past all of Jack’s thunder. His tall lithe bulk settled behind Casper, arm up against the window. Iron. This bladed edge Casper had never heard before put a chill racing down his spine. “As it goes, he’s a friend. Nothing more.”

And he'd thought Cain had sounded like the devil before.

A blaze went through Jack’s eyes, the grey little more than a skein of ash across a fire, and he took two steps closer to square up to Cain like Casper was just a fucking road bollard or something other inanimate fucking object that Jack could leap over when he went for Cain’s throat.

Animal heat on one side and Cain’s cold pressure at his back. Casper couldn’t move. All the words that just weren’t right choked up in his throat and flooded his lungs. The roar of the street screamed through his skull, and maybe it’d only ever, ever, _ever_ stop when his brain was a smear on the road.

What did he say? He couldn't think.

Same as fucking always. There was a reason he kept falling back together with Jack, and that was because he never knew what to say to push him away.

“A friend, huh?” Jack’s sneer wasn’t like Cain’s. Jack’s sneer was a thing of fraying restraint and loathing flayed against his own back. “Didn’t he ever fucking tell you he doesn’t do _friends_?”

“Mm…” Cain’s slender fingers brushed behind Casper's ear, fiddling with the short hair there, a kiss of chill. “And yet … here we are.” A pause, in which Casper caught the white edge of Cain’s grin in the murky shop window. “Friends. You know—”

Jack’s fist slammed into the window, an inch from where Cain rested his head against his arm. Not even a flinch, and Cain’s grin only widened as Jack leant in to snarl in his face. “How about you take your fucking hand off him, huh? How about that before I smash your fucking face in?”

Rich laughter twisted through the droning noise. One by one, long spider legs of translucent white, Cain’s fingers closed around Casper’s throat. Cold; Casper gagged at the touch. “I’d like to see you try, _worm._ ” Little more than a hiss, but that black venom cut clean through the screaming traffic. _“_ And once you have, I’m going to peel the skin from—”

That was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack: I'm gonna punch you  
> Cain: *hissing* i'll laugh while i peel the skin off your face  
> Casper: DUDE
> 
> Ah... he really does take things too far. Not that he would've done it. Probably.
> 
> Now, is this cassie finally taking a stand? We'll see!


	30. Meltdown

Before Cain could finish the sick violence that drizzled from his lips, Casper twisted out from between him and Jack. The movement of their precious little trophy finally drew their attention out of this shitty machismo dick-swinging.

It was so fucking loud, the traffic and the voices just _drilled_ into his goddamn skull. All these grey-wash buildings closed in on him like the sky collapsed onto the street and drowned him in those murky clouds. Casper clutched his arms across his chest, the wind whipping the smoke off his cigarette into his eyes. He staggered back a few steps until the leash around his wrist arrested him.

“Just fucking shut up!”

Cain and Jack both looked down him, vacant faced, raised eyebrows.

“Cassie—” Cain started, a tart edge to the way he pronounced Casper’s name.

It made him fucking sick. His voice broke at the edges of his shout. “I said shut up! We—” Casper jabbed his finger at Cain, the cigarette a burning spear wielded against a giant— “are not _fucking_ friends. So _fuck off_. And you—” at Jack now, who’s face at only darkened with each cracking word Casper forced up his throat—“You have no fucking right to tell me off for being around _anyone_ when you fucking broke up with _me._ I’m fucking sick of you snapping things off the second you get upset and leaving me to fucking _drown_ until you get your head on straight and—and just _swan_ back in whenever like nothing fucking well happened! I’m sick of it! I’m—”

“Nah, _fuck_ off, Cas.” Jack shoved away from the shop window, looming over Casper. His shoulders were tombstone squared and a snarl bared his teeth – wolfish not for its brashness now, but for its bite. At the edges of Casper's vision, the tide flowing past caught riptides as people slowed and stared. “Is it fuck like that. If you gave a fuck about me it wouldn’t take you half a fucking night to find some other guy to—”

“I’m not fucking him!” Casper screamed. “You’re just a—”

Jack cut over him easily. He always did. “Oh yeah, is it fuck like that. I got one fucking name for you, Cas—” _Oh for fuck’s—_ “Levi.” Jack pronounced it like a curse, and he curled his lip when Casper flinched from it. He always fucking brought that one up, no matter that it had been nearly a fucking year ago and after Jack had kicked him out anyway. Casper shivered, his throat clutching at itself, and wrapped his arms tight over his chest against a sudden wave of cold. Jack snorted at whatever piteous thing he saw in Casper’s withdrawal. “Yeah, that’s fucking right. And I know you—”

A tide of rot drowned Casper’s senses right the same time as Cain seized his arm. Long fingers ground the bones in his forearm together as Cain yanked it up, dragging Casper around. It strained in Casper’s shoulder, but the protest died as soon as he caught sight of Cain’s face.

Everything died. The sound, the street, the filthy fucking stink. None of it left but Cain looming over him inches away with pure fucking fear slathered across his face.

Casper’s blood ran cold. And it sure didn’t feel like a figure of speech.

“C—”

“What did he look like?” Cain demanded. His long coat billowed around Casper’s ankles and while Casper’s mouth flapped like it blew in a goddamn breeze too, Cain jerked his arm again, a wordless hiss sliding through his bloodless lips. “I asked what he fucking well looks like, Casper. _Tell me_. _NOW_!”

“Fuck!” What the fuck was this? What the fuck had Cain’s face that shade of white and his eyes like the rolling orbs of an animal jammed in the slaughter? A heartbeat silent, and Cain made the same tight, furious sound, yanked Casper closer—

“Alright!” The words babbled from Casper’s lips. His heart pounded in his chest and the fucking corpse stink drowned him. “Alright! Fucking hell, he—he was this fucking blonde guy, like—like kinda ass-ugly, tall as you and twice as…" Casper trailed off as Cain’s grip loosened. The rigid fear slackened as he pressed a hand to it, fingers splayed across his face and a tremble in each one of them. “Twice as hench,” Casper mumbled, and then louder, his voice cracking, “Cain, what the fuck? What’s your—”

Casper didn’t get a chance to finish. Cain’s hand dropped from his face. Still with those wide eyes, coltish as they skitted over the street, but now, his jaw was set to concrete, so tight the bone jutted in the plane of his cheek. Cain glanced Jack, whose mouth hung loose – and that sure said a lot for how mushed his brain was – and he spun on his heel, his coat the flare of a funeral shroud in the buffeting wind. His grip hoisted Casper’s forearm up high, and Casper had no choice but to stumble along after him, struggling to keep his feet beneath him while Cain strode off down the street.

“Let me go!”

Behind him, Jack shouted his name. Casper strained to look over his shoulder. The crowds closed in where he and Cain had walked, and Jack shoved between the gormless flock of sheep, their vacant eyes fixed the spectacle.

Cain didn’t stop. His grip dug so deep into Casper’s arm the bruise already ached, and against those fingers and the gnawing teeth of ice grinding into his bones, there was no escaping that hold. Casper’s heart throbbed in his throat and all the sweat gathered beneath his collar had turned horribly cold.

The cigarette still dangled loose from his fingers, burnt down to the filter. Casper dropped it and slapped Cain’s arm. “Cain, fuck off! Let me go!”

Asshole didn’t even _look_. The intent as he stalked down the street, dragging Casper like wayward baggage, swallowed him whole.

They reached a row of houses. Every door and window they passed rattled in its frame. One. Two. Three. Four. The fifth, the door flew open, smashing against the wall, and Cain hauled Casper through the little concrete garden and shoved through the front door.

It slammed behind them and drowned in a miasma of stinking black

Silence, for a moment, the pulsing of blood in Casper’s ears and both of their breathing heavy and ragged in this narrow little hall. Cain towered amongst the clutter; the strewn mess of his hair brushed an ugly hanging lamp. Cain’s eyes were fixed on Casper, but they didn’t seem to see, the brown ringed by slick whites.

A beat. Footsteps upstairs. Hammering knocks exploded on the door, and straining through it, the muffled sound of Jack’s shouts.

Cain jabbed his finger at Casper, stooping low so that his growl brushed cool air against Casper’s lips. “You’re not fucking well coming out again.”

Casper exploded. “What is your fucking problem? Who’s fucking house is this, Cain? What the—”

Screaming burst upstairs, drowning Casper’s hoarse shout, but even that didn’t give this _cunt_ the right to turn away. Not all fucking dramatic and elegant like that with a sweep of black wool and a vicious strike of his fist into the drywall. Cain trailed spat words Casper didn’t understand as he shouldered his way into the living room. The leash that dragged Casper along hardly chilled him against the frost eating up this home.

Cain crouched in the middle of the living room, paper and child’s toys and clothes thrown as if by a whirlwind out to the very edges of the room and in the middle, carpet torn aside, Cain struck at the wood with a stick of chalk.

This was mad.

Casper rubbed his hands over his face, eyes squinted against the hammering on the door and the screeching from upstairs. This was completely fucking mad. Some fucking circle full of symbols and crazy shit _,_ and Cain scratched it out with a fevered drive that swallowed the whole room in cold and rot.

“You’re actually just a fucking psycho,” Casper said into his cupped hands. “Oh my fucking god.”

“Oh _yes,_ Casper, love.” Cain didn’t take his eyes off his crazy scribblings, stabbing at the mouldy old floor with the chalk. “I’m a total fucking psychopath, I’m sure, but forgive me if I couldn’t give two fucking shits what you think of me right now because I bloody well know it hasn’t changed an inch. This way—”

Cain sliced a sharp line across the width of the circle and stood up, shoving the chalk back into his pocket as he turned to Casper, his cheeks reddened and his hair still a mess of loose locks and strands stuck to his forehead.

Cain stepped in close with his long coat thrown back behind him. The white collar of his shirt hung loose and Casper glimpsed the smooth milky planes of his chest. “This _fucking_ way, you’re safe. I don’t give two fucks what you think of me, because all of this—” Cain’s voice climbed as he spoke, but it didn’t hit at a roar, not quite – it broke around the edges like all that panic still spasming through his face was an inch from breaking into a scream. “It’s all because I want to bloody well keep you safe! And you _aren’t_ safe out here, not where they can get to you! I just can’t bloody do it, Cas. We’re going home. That’s it. End of discussion.”

Bitterness swelled on Casper’s tongue and he scuffed his boot against the carpet. There was no point. Jack still hammered on the door, but he might as well be screaming down the phone a hundred miles away. “So you’re just going to keep me ‘til I die in there instead, right?”

A strangled laugh choked from Cain’s throat, and in a sharp movement, he seized Casper’s wrist in a bruising grip. The wildness in his features lunged up to a breaking point around that razor-sharp grin. “Yes, Casper. That’s _exactly_ what I’m going to do, and trust me, love, you’d rather die safe inside with me where nothing can hurt you and _they_ can’t get in, because that—” his finger jabbed at nothing—“is better than _anything_ they have planned to do to you. I’m not failing you again, Cas. I can’t watch it happen again.”

Cain didn’t give him a chance to reply. With a jerk, he hauled Casper forward into the centre of the chalked circle. It stunk worse in here. Just a couple of steps different, but the rot surged down his throat like vomit. Gagging, Casper slapped his hand to his mouth and nose, smothering out the putrid stink of it. Where his breath escaped past his sleeved hand, it crystallised in the musty air.

Mad. It was all fucking mad. This fresh paranoia slapped Casper’s mind so hard all he could do was blink at the door back through to the hall. Ten metres away, his last glimpse of freedom vanished in the black smog between him and the only person who’d at least almost cared.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Casper whispered into his sleeve. His shattered voice trembled just the same as every inch of him.

Cain made a wet sound in the back of his throat, somewhere between laughter and some pitiful sob. Without releasing his grip, he crouched down and pressed his fingers to the centre of the circle.

A flash of black. Cold that plunged into his bones. All sense torn away, and in the jagged emptiness, Casper screa—

The world reappeared in a whirl of whitewash walls and heavy wood floorboards.

The moment his body regained a sense of _physicality,_ Casper’s legs gave way. Strong arms caught him just before his knees hit wood, and he choked and gagged around a surge of blinding nausea as the grip under his arms hauled him aside. The wood scratched his cheek and Casper pressed his face into the roughness of it. Something fucking real after the mind-shattering freefall of incorproeality.

A bang, right in front of his face. Casper screamed, a hoarse, broken sound, and scrambled backwards, teeth gritted against the retches that rolled up his throat. Cain’s shoe was planted just in front of him, and lancing away from it, the floorboards ruptured, a spine of jagged shards that drew back from a black chasm to the belly of the house. It split a circle just like the one he’d drawn back in the city, this one etched into the floorboards themselves, the edges smoothed with age.

A cold, musty draft wafted against Casper’s face, but past that, it was warm. The air smelt of fresh coffee and vanilla.

Like home.

Sickness heaved through him and Casper vomited on the floor.

Gross. But the acrid bile was nothing to that stink that had consumed him. The one like he waded through a mire of rotting corpses, a plague-bed – victims dropping too thick and fast to bury, and so they were thrown, sores and boils and lesions all weeping pus, to bloat and decay beneath the beating sun.

His gorge rose again, but this one, panting with bile a string hanging from his lips, he forced back down. The puddle of yellowish liquid staining the knotted floorboards spun, and every sense felt distant as if it lay interspersed by a screen of creamy white nothing.

What had just happened?

A string of memories from minutes gone swirled through his head, the snapping tail of the beast an image of Cain’s snarling fear. Each new thing he recalled, the white deepened, sinking through sickly pink to a throbbing, messy red.

Casper dragged his sleeve over his mouth and stumbled up to his feet. Cain was still there, one hand braced against the wall and the other pressed to his face, guarding the expression beneath. His shoulders wallowed, seeming almost too small for the tailored shape of that coat and each of his breaths that broke the silence were frayed and bleak.

Behind it, the throb, throb, throb of blood pulsing in Casper’s ears. Something screamed, but the crimson drowned that wretched little kid in the back of his mind that cried at the dark.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Whatever Casper had expected, it hadn’t been laughter. Nosirree, anything but that, except maybe it should’ve been _just_ that, because clearly psycho here was fucking _cracked._

The laughter started low, a hoarse chuckle rolling around Cain’s throat, but while Casper stood there, fish mouth hanging in the breeze, it grew, tumbling through itself and gathering madness as it went until Cain stood with his back bowed, hunched over himself and his hand still splayed across his face while he howled, cracking laughter hauled up from his gut and each time he lost the air, it cracked apart with a sob.

“It’s going to happen again,” Cain said, the mad rant of the words turned to gasps through his laughing. “It’s just going to fucking happen again. It’s fate, love. Every time. Every god—damn— _fucking_ time – you’re going to die and it’s _my_ fault. I’m going to kill you again, Cassie. It’s just going to happen again.”

Cain fell into a crouch, heavy like his knees gave out, and he slammed his fist into the wall, the thud echoed by a snatch of a snarl. His coat crumpled around his ankles and suddenly, any _elegance_ he’d ever had belonged to another man, not this psycho mess crumbling to pieces – hair tangled by the wind and his raking hands, the madness in his laughter, the clumsy angles of his limbs as he as he slumped against the wall, head grinding against the plaster as he howled behind his shaking hand.

“You’re crazy.” Casper’s words cracked like dry parchment in the air. A shiver shot through his spine and he wrapped his arms tight around himself. Here it was. Cain was going to kill him, and he’d been right all along.

And hey, maybe he’d pretend that the real crazy hadn’t been thinking psycho had ever loved him.

The lance through his chest had Casper stumbling back a step. A ragged breath tore from his throat, some serpentine coil wrapped around his mind curling tighter, crushing his brain under the constrictor-death of reality. Cain was crazy, and Casper was going to die with crazy’s hands wrapped around his fucking throat while nutjob sobbed over his latest lost boy.

Maybe this was all just the afterlife anyway. Time borrowed from the Cain who’d cradled him on the bridge and eased him back from the edge.

How could someone who cared so much kill him anyway?

There was a door just to his left and without taking his eyes off Cain and his mad laughter, Casper fumbled for the handle. The knob was heavy and rickety beneath his hand and he twisted it. It stuck – _shit ­_ – then the sweat-slick grip of Casper’s hand caught it and with a groan of protest, the door unstuck.

No reaction from the madman losing his mind on the floor.

On trembling legs, Casper edged out of the room into a dark corridor he didn’t recognise. With the shadows licking at his throat and his heels, he crept down it as quiet as he could, careful heel-to-toe steps with any knock against the wood drowned in the sobbing laughter that chased him down the hall. Only once he reached a familiar part of the house, murky grey light filtering in through a cloudy window, did he give into the adrenaline that raced electric through his veins and _ran._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Casper stood up for himself (finally) but Cain's had a total meltdown so it's all fun and games! My readers on tapas wanted cain & jack to both get punched in the face, so watch this space for the deleted scene where everyone gets smacked.
> 
> Further!! I'm now ahead of where I've reached on tapas, so I'm gonna be reigning back the daily schedule. Uploads will now, as I'm uploading longer chapters here, be Mondays and Fridays. I'll see how things go, but this will be the schedule for now until I get ahead on editing.
> 
> Thanks everyone for reading <3 Hope this new schedule is alright!


	31. Monster in the Mirror

Casper lay in bed staring at the mirror, and the creature in the mirror stared back at him.

Maybe it looked like him, behind the shadows that slurped up its features into an impenetrable veil, but right now, it was a thing of the dark. All he could see of its face was a long grey tongue and teeth that made black hooks in its vacuous jaw.

All caught, glistening, in the thin slice of moonlight.

Shadows obscured it, swallowing detail into the frightening mystery of the dark, but its shape scooped blackness out of the night. Its limbs flailed. Mad, twitching spasms that jerked through the air, the wings of a fly half-crushed by the swatter. Buzzing, it swarmed in circles on the floor. Its shape rippled with each movement as if it jerked around the shattered mush inside it.

Each time it moved, Casper flinched, his body a quivering, shackled mess hiding with the covers up to his chin, but he couldn’t take his eyes off it. That _thing._

Wasted, its skin clung to bone the way chicken skin does when you’ve scraped out all the meat and left it out to rot. Each glimpse illuminated by the moonlight oozed putrid yellow pus across bloated, green-black skin that at once swelled with the gases of decay and crumpled against its rickety bones.

Broken bones. What kind of creature twisted like that? It hunkered there amongst a nest of sheets with its arms twisted behind its back and its ribs knives jutting from its skin. Its spine twisted to a serpentine contortion and it slithered through the length of it each time the creature coughed. A horrid, retching sound that splattered grey bile across the sheets.

When it didn’t cough, it hooted, low and chilling beneath its breath.

Casper couldn’t move. Fear lay a weight on his chest that crushed his ribs into his lungs and forced the blood of their haemorrhaging choking up his throat. He couldn’t breathe, but he still fucking breathed too loud, wheezing sobs pushing past his lips, too loud, too loud. That thing could _hear_ him. His toes kept twitching and he couldn’t keep them still.

Could it get through the mirror?

_It can’t. You know it can’t. It’s stuck there. It’s just a dream._

The creature shrieked and lurched forward in the bed. Casper scrambled up the bed, hands pressed to his mouth. All the dark corners of the room hung so close, physical things slurping at him, and the gurgling beasts within tugged open the portal for the creature in the mirror.

The tongue slathered over its lips and its chin and its hollow, rotten throat while its spastic limbs flailed.

 _I will consume you._ Its voice was the grate of metal against bone, wet with the oozing badness of rot. _This is all you are._

The headboard pressed like ice against the back of his neck and Casper shook. Was it watching him behind the gluttonous shadows? Or did a burnt slather of uninterrupted scar lay across the space where all its features should be? Blind and still as the room around him. Comatose darkness but for the squirming of things hidden behind the veil.

Thin, white worms underneath its skin.

_Go away. Why can’t it just go away?_

Back when he was a little kid, he’d squeeze his eyes closed and pray the monsters left. _If I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me. It can't hurt me. Don't let it hurt me._ But he knew better now. It was when you faltered in your vigilance, let your eyes flutter closed to the relief of darkness. In that moment of weakness, the monsters struck.

Sometimes they struck even when you did everything right anyway, but if you watched so long your eyes ached, the sleeplessness suffocated you, and every good thing faded to ash, then at least you tried. At least you fucking tried, and it wasn’t all your useless, shitty fault.

It was his fault he was here. Every second he’d spent with Cain before this, he’d closed his eyes and pressed his face into Cain’s chest so he couldn’t see the monster behind that smiling—

The creature surged forward, and this time it didn’t stop. A maddening frenzy of thrashing limbs and pulsating flesh. Casper’s chest lurched. Heart squeezed in rotten fists. He scrambled up the headboard, the covers tangled ropes around his legs. Hands fucking slipped off the wood drenched in this sick sweat.

It didn’t stop. The shriek from its ragged throat smacked him so hard it drove rust inside his brain and in a cacophonous shattering, it broke the mirror.

Screaming, Casper grabbed Mackie and sprinted from the room. The staircase passed in a blur and he pounded down the hallway and burst through Cain’s door.

The slam of the door off the wall jerked Cain awake. Cold swept through the room even as he fumbled himself upright. Moonlight streamed through his unshielded windows, and it gleamed in his dark eyes as they found Casper, a spectre in the dark trailing a toy lion from his hand. His arms were already open and the chill already fading when Casper threw himself into the bed and into Cain’s arms.

No warmth to take the ice out of this sweat pouring down his body or the shuddering, aching fear worming into his bones, but there was strength in his arms and safety in the covers Cain swept around them. Sweetness in the murmurs from his lips as he stroked his fingers through Casper’s hair.

Casper just couldn’t stop shaking. It was deep in him now, like his bones all threatened to shatter and twist like that monster.

_A dream, Roach. Just a nightmare out of that fucked-up thing you call a brain._

Like nightmares fucking lunged out the mirror at you.

It was still dark. In the dark, that creature lurked out there behind the veil. It and others, their chittering breaths wheezing out of the night, waiting, waiting, waiting for that moment when you closed your eyes.

To pounce.

There was only so long you could stare into the darkness before it drove you mad.

Casper swallowed hard and forced his croaking rasp up his throat. “Put on the light.”

Cain did, twisting back to grope for the switch and struggling a little under the clinging weight Casper kept on his chest. The lamplight chased out the dark, [deity’s] lantern burning away devils and demons and the horrors of night on its holy spill of salvation. It lit the low-hanging silks framing Cain’s bed, the soft weave of the Persian rug, and the stack of books on the nightstand. Across the room, their tangled reflection whispered in the vast, dark window and for once, Casper didn’t wonder about what lay beyond. Cain’s echo stood a ward there against the beasts that scratched at the glass.

The rotting stink of the nightmare vanished as the creamy light splashed across the room, and in its place, that sweet vanilla scent tinkled through the dusty pine.

Cain’s smell. A sob choked up Casper’s throat and he pressed his face into Cain’s chest, squirming up into his lap so they were only separated only by Mackie’s threadbare bulk trapped between their stomachs. A soft gasp left Cain’s lips as he did, and gentle hands held him there, splayed across his back and twined in the greasy tangle of his hair.

It should be hideous. Pathetic little roach curling up on Nutjob’s lap like this was anything but a fever dream, like the last few days hadn’t happened and Casper wasn’t a curse, worse even than Cain’s fantasy psychosis of all these other Casper’s that had ever come before. Casper should scream and spit and twist away, dig in his nails and tear off that skin and do all the things this simmering in his gut begged him to do.

Should.

Casper pressed Mackie lower, the lion standing chaperone where Casper’s legs straddled Cain’s hips, and sunk deeper into the presence of him.

Comfort and care and sweet vanilla bliss.

“Cassie, love…” Cain nuzzled against Casper’s throat, his breath cool puffs against Casper’s clammy skin. It wasn’t nice, but he’d warm up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

All sweet and soft like he hadn’t been that hateful devil just earlier today, dark and cold and cruel. _And you say that like you aren’t one too, Roach._ Everyone had it, and even if Cain’s was buried shallow, Casper had drawn it out on purpose. Maybe at the end of it, that made Cain all the more real.

Difference was Cain had something other than the devil, even if it was just a skin pulled over burnt, black flesh and twisting horns. Casper was nothing but a ghoul and his veil had long worn so thin it tore.

Casper shook his head against Cain’s chest, the sweat off his face still slick between them. “It’s nothing.”

A long sigh slipped from Cain’s lips, arctic against Casper’s throat. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Alright. Come here then—” With a grunt, Cain shifted, freeing his legs from underneath himself and easing them both down into the silken sheets. They rose about him like pools of night – not the night that was full of demons, but that insubstantial space between the stars that cradled the moonlight of his skin.

Cain laid them down so Casper huddled on top of him, splayed out across his chest and bundled up in the circle of his arms – although first, he swept the covers up, cocooning them both up to Casper’s head in soft silk and goose feathers, a little nest of heaven against the chill dark of night.

Cain freed Mackie. A soft smile wavered over his lips as he looked at the lion, held face to face as if some secret passed between them, and then Cain nestled him into Casper’s pillow just beside them.

Funny how it was Casper’s pillow already.

The creamy light brushed the high points of Cain’s face the same way a painter dusts stars in the eyes of their muse. It was a soft thing, a rumour of illumination hazy across his cheeks and his lips and the straight slope of his nose, but it had Casper’s breath catching anyway. A glimpse of perfection in the dark hours of the night when things became at once raw and unreal.

“How come you’re so perfect?”

Cain sighed and tipped his head back. Reverent, his fingers traced across the gnarled skin of Casper’s scars, leaving a comet’s trail of ice and electric in their wake. “Because the only bits that are real are the bits that aren’t.”

The whispered words felt as if Cain plucked stars down out of the night and offered them to Casper in a basket woven of moonlight, but in the blind, groping darkness where Casper shut his eyes against the monster, the gift went unheeded and the sweetness didn’t reach his tongue.

No matter, because he still couldn’t breathe.

A question stirred in his throat, but while he still searched for its shape, Cain’s eyes lowered to him and their tender light in the darkness stole the last of his mind.

“And before you ask,” Cain murmured, “I can love you because the real parts of me are more like you than you can dream.”

Casper couldn’t make himself say anything else that night. With the soft light still spilling across their skin, sleep gathered that slow, heavy part of his mind. Warmth smothered the spaces trapped between them and seeped like sunlight into Cain’s skin. No matter the size of his room, the world hazed to darkness and inconsequence at the edges of the bed – their paradise, a grove tucked away from the world and bathed in moonlight and dreams.

There was singing in that drowsy darkness, and if Casper could, he might’ve cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like Cain's over his little meltdown. He's a sweetheart when he's not going crazy. I kinda missed them having nice little talks as well, and Casper's way too busy being scared of his nightmares to ruin things.


	32. Wolfsbane

The magic of the night before vanished in a puff of some unpleasantly greenish smoke when Casper woke up in Cain’s bed with no Cain to make it the entire point of Cain’s bed. Ironic that. And miserable. He’d clawed himself to about two minutes from making himself leave the warmth to go sulk in his room again when his stomach growled.

Easy choice there. The thought of pulling aside that mirror to hide it made his skin crawl and lying in bed with it right there – nuh uh, no way. Just a shame that when he trudged into the kitchen with about as much pizzazz as a floorboard, rubbing this shitty sand out of his eyes, Cain was already sat at the table. He pored over a nauseatingly thick book with his equally nauseating bowl of weird healthy breakfast stuff.

The fruit yoghurt oats thing was almost gone, just the ends stuck to the sides of the bowl left, and a steaming cup of coffee rested in front of him. While Casper watched him, his finger stopped in the centre of a page and groaning around the spoon in his mouth, he slumped back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The wisteria trickling past the window cast a sweet lilac tint to his skin no matter how overcast the day outside.

Alright, looked like this weird fuck-off fluttering and breath-catching and fuzziness all through his lungs and his fucking kidneys or whatever hadn’t vanished with the magic of last night. Probably liver damage. Easier to go with that. Casper made himself scowl and shuffled over to the table, wiggling his fingers at R2. The thing was doing whatever magic a sorcerous construct did in the kitchen to actually make food. Cain didn’t look at Casper, even though he’d absolutely seen him coming and that stiffness hadn’t been in his shoulders a second ago.

At least none of that psycho breakdown vibe had carried over. A shudder clutched at Casper’s ribs, echoed by that howling laughter. Maybe it’d been stupid coming down here, but he’d already done the stupid running to Cain last night so…

He was still playing the game, wasn’t he? Now more than ever, he needed to get out, ‘cause Cain had just told him what was gonna happen if he stayed.

Hands around his throat, choking the life out of him.

Soft fingers trailing across his cheek under the brush of starlight, and a slow smile as if every broken thing about Casper was beauty crystallized into a dewdrop kiss.

Casper dumped himself into his chair and pulled Cain’s coffee toward him. Call that exactly how bad Cain’s mood was that he didn’t even oi him or anything. Casper sipped the boiling liquid. Milk. Gross. And ow.

“You weren’t there when I woke up.”

Cain’s eyes didn’t leave the window, a stubborn cast to his jaw. “I didn’t think you’d want me to be.”

Which Casper couldn’t argue with at all, except he’d kinda had wanted Cain to be there. He kinda missed waking up in that gross sweaty mess with Cain already awake, stroking his hair and watching the dozy fluttering of Casper’s eyes with so much awe that Casper could have been an angel instead of dirty, ghoulish Roach Boy. Didn’t matter that Casper hadn’t been able to go five minutes without something cruel spilling from his lips – sometimes unintentionally, sometimes because he felt sick with himself if he didn’t put it there – because those five minutes until he snatched the soft wonder from Cain’s face were pure bliss.

Except this time, he just wanted it to be all that bliss. Nothing but googly eyes and holding hands and the way Cain laughed when Casper baited him in for the viciousness. Just that, all the way down to breakfast and all the way through the day until Casper stopped thinking all this sappy crap and got his fucking head on square. Idiot.

Nice daydreams, Roach Boy, but you ever seen anything funnier than a cockroach with googly eyes glued on its shell?

Bullshit, that’s what it was.

Cain’s spoon clashed against his bowl, and when Casper blinked out of his reverie, Cain was frowning at him, a tightness around his lips. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

Almost sounded a little petulant. Casper grinned, wan and humourless, even though he wanted to hide his face and maybe run away because that probably hadn’t been some scowling, miserable look he’d been giving Cain. One blessing from those sniggering gods, at least, that his voice sounded horrible today. Ghastly.

“Does it bother you?” Casper rasped.

“No.”

“Sure.”

“Piss off, Cas.”

Casper snorted and slurped up a mouthful of coffee. A low whizzing cut through the air and R2 slid up to the table in a cloud of indigo and by some completely indeterminable means, levitated a fresh coffee to Cain and a bowl of fruit up to Casper. He still found it hard to eat in the morning, but Cain had basically assaulted him with breakfast foods until he found something he could stomach.

Cain spoke again while a slice of mango sat tangy on Casper’s tongue. Brusquely, the coffee raised to his lips but not tipped to drink. “If you’re planning something unpleasant, I don’t have time for it this morning. I have a meeting in an hour – the one I already had to cancel once because of your Neanderthal of a boyfriend – and I’m hardly going to be late because you want to do something foul.”

And as if to punctuate his point, he slammed the book closed, throwing up a cloud of dust, and planted his elbows either side of it. He cupped the coffee mug in his hands as he took a sour-looking sip.

Casper, on the other hand, didn’t have much function in his brain past blinking. Popping eyelids like twin fish mouths and a vacantly drooping jaw. Real attractive, Roach Boy. Baiting him in great now.

And that was just it, wasn’t it? Was Casper still baiting him in, or had it all tumbled past him, shattered against the unforgiving earth while Casper screamed out the chaos trapped within his own mind?

The words bellowed at him over the wind came back to him, dressed up in violent gales that drew a shiver through his spine with their memory. Something spasmed through his gut and Casper swallowed, the half-masticated mango a lump of sand sliding down his throat.

How else did he get out if Cain hated him?

What was left if he even disgusted Crazy?

Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the mango making a lump in his throat. This lump was wet and whimpering and pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth. All puppy-dog eyes at Cain without even trying them.

Where’s the line, Roach?

But the blur beneath his feet made it all so real. It made his heart keen. It made Cain lower the cup from his lips, and it softened his face as his eyebrows drew together, etching a line in the puckering of the skin.

“I—” Casper’s voice broke off, a cracked note like ten octaves higher than it should be, horrible and hoarse and Cain’s lips just tightened more hearing it. Casper took a gulp of gross milky coffee to soothe this stupid lump out at least. Never could soothe the break until it healed on its own.

And then once he’d drunk it, he’d forgotten what he was about to say anyway. Something stupid. Something pathetic. Think about it harder, Roach. It had to be the right thing.

Otherwise he might as well just slit his own throat right now.

The chair scraped against the wood, and Casper’s startled eyes met hardness in Cain’s face again. He’d stood up. The bare gap Casper had prised apart in his guard had snapped shut once more, and those iron gates rebuffed the limp-fingered pawing of pouty lips and guilt-tripping eyes without thought.

Cain waved his hand and the book on the table lifted and skimmed above Casper. R2’s net of sorcery caught it, and the book bobbed idly above the construct’s spherical ‘head’.

“Take that back, R2, please.” Tension drew Cain’s voice to a thrumming knot. His eyes were fixed on the door, but the rest of his words were for Casper. “I won’t even bother coming back later. I have things to do, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find some other way of entertaining yourself besides tormenting me.”

Cain’s tongue clucked against his teeth, a weight of disdain in that sound, and he strode for the door. Not even a pause to glare.

A lurch of panic smacked through Casper’s wheezy, soaked brain – the choking prospect of being alone, trapped with nothing but his own cackling mind and the creature in the mirror.

“Cain!”

Cain stopped in the doorway. His hand closed white-knuckled on the frame and he made a twist of his neck vividly stiff with restraint. “Piss off, Cas.”

What did he say? Everything that bridled at his lips felt stained with this nausea that roiled through his gut. Too honest. Too raw. Casper pressed his eyes closed. Cigarette. He just needed a cigarette. Dry smoke to cram this whimpering, clawing mess back down his throat. He’d find a room with no mirrors and he’d be fine.

A step, the tap of Cain’s shoe dull against the wood floor. Casper’s chair clattered as he lunged to his feet. “Don’t go!”

Silence. Nothing but a sharp hiss from Cain as he froze half a step out the door, but Casper’s thumping heart filled the silence plenty, and at each slam against his ribs it screamed all the terrible truths he wanted to blurt, but as it retracted, seized, it murmured venom that urged him back into his chair.

Casper wasn’t sure which won.

“I fucking hate being here,” Casper said, and tears that would never come stained the edges of his words, “but I hate being alone here even more. If you’re going to kidnap me to make me your little fucking housewife, the least you could do is keep me some fucking company.”

Cain twisted in the doorway, putting his back against the frame, and his features – all arched eyebrows and curled lips – held an acid. One that’d leave nothing behind but a sneering skull when it corroded away that mask.

Casper flinched away from it, his legs knocking against the heavy wooden chair.

“I offered company.” A black tension thrummed through Cain’s voice. “I received vileness. Don’t think I’ve forgotten any of it. I don’t begrudge it.” He laughed, bitter, and tipped his head back against the doorframe while his fingers squeezed the bridge of his nose. A humourless smile spread across his lips and touched no other part of his face. “God knows I can’t begrudge any of it, but I know well enough now that every pleasant thing that comes out your mouth is little more than the way wolfsbane sits so prettily on your tongue before it cuts out your fucking heart.”

Casper choked. A whimper forced out of his lungs as they spasmed tight, past his lips and he caught it in a hand pressed to his mouth. The languishing grey sunlight spilt across the kitchen and cast Cain’s sneer the way it catches a waning-moon, a crook of bleak light cradling features obscured by shadows, the same ones that gathered in the creases of his shirt and pooled behind his shoulders against the white-washed wall.

How had he become poison even to psychotic obsession? Was this the way it always went? All those little lost boys seething out their venom and inch by inch, this demon lurking behind Cain’s skin reared its horns and black fog seeped from between its blackened teeth, and in a lunge, a lurch, it drove the obsidian knife through Casper’s (a thousand other Casper’s) heart and cried that this one was just poison.

Was that what he’d meant? Was that why he’d killed all of them?

Or was it just him? Was Casper just filth made flesh?

Call this feeling eating through his chest what it was then. It fucking hurt that Cain looked at him with revilement when Casper could still close his eyes and picture the golden awe breathless across his face that dreamlike night above the city, when he could still feel the chill, electric brush of his lips and the whisper in his ear as Cain vanished into the night.

Remember me like this.

Did Cain remember Casper like that? And fuck, what stupid part of his head wanted this psycho nutjob to still look at him with stars in his eyes, but he couldn’t shove it down, couldn’t swallow it or drown it or bury it. He’d set it alight, but as the fantasy went up in flames, the ashes drifted across the spread of his mind and coated each damp surface in a fixation he could never scrape off.

That’s what he got for running for comfort from nightmares in the middle of the fucking night. The resurrection of feelings.

But it was good, right? He needed that desire if he was ever going to get out. So no matter what madness drove him to let these whimpering words into the heavy air, it was all to get out.

Cain wasn’t looking at him, eyes squeezed closed and half-hidden behind the fingers fixed like a vice on the bridge of his nose, and it made it easier to say. A shuddering breath, his nails scratching at his wrist as he tried to find his place amongst the vastness of the room and this gulf between them.

“I’m—” Casper’s voice cracked, but he made himself carry on anyway. Might as well sound as pathetic as he felt. “I’m having a really bad time right now. I—I don’t know why I’m being like this but—but it’s all this—” A ragged breath choked up Casper’s throat and he tangled his fingers up in the side of his hair, pressing his eyes closed. “This fucking bad and all I can do is spit it at you. I don’t want to be like this, Cain. I—I miss you. I wanna wake up with you again and—”

“Just stop, Casper.”

Casper’s eyes flew open, blinking against the thin light seeping into the room. The darkness on Cain’s face hadn’t faded, just hardened, and when Casper met his eyes, Cain snorted and straightened up from the wall.

The realisation had hit Casper recently that Cain used anger and disdain as his walls, the grace and aloofness a sword wielded against hurt, and right now, he looked so like a god amongst men that it turned Casper’s mouth to a desert.

“I told you I don’t have time for this. Why don’t you practice the lines for when I get back tomorrow, love, and perhaps I’ll fall for it again next time.” In a sharp, lazy motion, Cain waved his hand through the air, a dismissal as he turned from the room. “I’m bloody fucking sick of it, Cas, and you wonder why I’ve been staying away.”

Then he was gone. A sob burst from Casper’s lips and he fell to his knees as Cain’s footsteps stamped off down the hallway.

Alone.

R2 whizzed up to his side with a fresh cup of coffee steaming between its digitless hands, and as Casper took the cup from it, the tears nearly came for real, stinging in his eyes and clogging the back of his nose.

“I don’t want him to hate me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, just in case anyone's up to date and following this, I just wanna let you all know I'm not going to be updating for a little while because I'm gonna be up to my neck in my dissertation. It's due October 15th, so to stick to the normal schedule, I'll be back with an episode on the 16th! 
> 
> See you all when I get back!
> 
> PS. My usual a/n would of course address Cain's old man breakfast. Cain is unfailingly healthy in all the hipster Instagram ways that I always dream of being. Not that he’d ever use Instagram. He eats smoked salmon and avocado on rye bread for lunch and drinks green smoothies even though they make him gag. He’d gone to the Chinese back in the eponymous chapter for the first time since he moved it there two months ago as a treat for not ruining an entire business merger by strangling the guy who kept laughing when he talked and acting like Cain didn’t know a damn about his business. (Now isn’t that a delightful coincidence.)


	33. Bloody, Miserable Horror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stains is back! I'm a day late, but I'll be back to Monday & Friday postings from here on out.
> 
> Enjoy the second half of the book!

Casper was still in the kitchen when Cain got back. When the light had cycled muddy yellow and violet and black like a bruise swelling in reverse. He hadn't stayed there, but like an inevitability, he'd returned from all those echoing reaches of the house. Left the vacant eyes of the mirrors in his and Cain's room and the familiar warmth of the study behind to settle in this nook of normality with its sturdy wooden units and bland whitewashed walls.

He'd tried to read for a bit, then screamed and thrown his coffee across the room when he realised why he couldn't, and then shaking, whimpering, he'd sent R2 upstairs to fetch pillows and a duvet.

Cain's pillows and duvet.

Casper bundled himself up on the floor in the scent of pine and vanilla and that tickling crisp of winter so peculiar to Cain. If he pressed his face close enough into the softness and thought about that sweet smell hard enough, it was almost like this black pit in his gut didn't eat him alive.

Cain was going to kill him, and all Casper could do was wish Cain was still here so he wouldn't feel so fucking alone.

How was that fair? Jack had never done that to him. This torment that gripped him, teeth sunk into his chest – when the fuck had he ever wanted company? That's why he'd done all this. That's why he'd screamed and cursed and shoved Cain away even while little halfway-sane Casper with his mourning robes on sobbed into a fucking handkerchief at the death of their plan.

Because when he was like this, when Casper saw happiness, it burnt his tongue like bile and rotted out the spaces beneath his skin.

All because it was exactly what he'd never deserve.

But wasn't this _it_? Not just it, but bolded, italicised, screamed in capital letters across the rolling grounds and gifted to the wind that howled across the fields to carry his message back to the heavens – tell the Norns their plaything had finally accepted his fate.

Cain was fucked. He was totally psycho nutjob crazy. Fixated on Casper in his endless chain of lost boys and the madness fuelled by his mad-god magic, and ... and Casper kind of liked it.

Messed up, right? The ghoul knew it. Lurking in the darkness, it chattered and whooped, its clawed hands and feet clattering against the tiles as it scampered about in the shadows. The flashes of its white skin where the moonlight seeped in were the streaking passages of blind fish in guttering, lightless depths. The ghoul wanted it. It always had.

It wanted it just as much as Casper always had.

The devil lounged on his throne with blood trickling past his lips and his long fingers scratching through Casper's hair.

It was a nightmare _._ It was the only thing he'd ever deserved.

It didn't matter either way, because the plan was the only way he'd ever get out.

And ... it was kind of all he'd wanted anyway, only wrapped up in madness and the last knife in the back of his freedom.

Now he'd ruined it.

Casper curled deeper into the covers, his breath hitching in his throat. The fabric lay so soft against his cheeks, a cotton kiss. Claws clicked against the rough flagstones, and with a low whine deep in its throat, the ghoul butted its head against the back of his neck. Casper batted it away. Stupid thing. Like seriously, the day he took comfort from his mental break demon, he might as well just slam the madhouse gates himself.

Like lying here dreaming of comfort from psycho kidnapper wasn't halfway there already.

A scratch against the back of his neck. The ghoul loomed so close now that Casper could smell the rotten meat stink of its breath. He slapped at it again, hauling the covers up over his back, but its claws plunged back down, raking along his spine.

Irritation a knot beneath his tongue, Casper flung the covers aside and flopped onto his back. Tarry drool dangled from the ghoul's lipless mouth, threatening to plummet onto his face, and its black eyes spun like twin galaxies drowning in a black hole.

"Can you just fuck—"

A low _wumph_ went through the air. Might have not made a noise at all if the house hadn't rung so silent, but all it made was a fraction of a second before he would've heard something anyway. Something slammed out in the hallway. Clattering – metal on wood on wood – and a clumsy, edgeless scuffle.

Casper froze, his throat a thumping knot, until—

" _Oo-ow._ Stupid bloody, cocking..."

Cain. It was Cain.

Casper scrambled up to his feet, wrestling with the covers tangled about his legs as he made some drunkard's hop across the kitchen floor. His mind, still sulking down on the floor, gaped at the shitty bad sense of his body because seriously, if he'd just _lain_ there, nutjob out there probably would've just walked past and left him in peace.

But no, here he was, practically _jogging_ out of the kitchen into the hallway like some fucking maiden welcoming her husband home from the goddamn war. His heart rattled about in his chest, laying on his ribs like some surly old dwarf with a pickaxe.

He caught himself on the doorframe, twisting on his socked foot to face the short length of hallway down to the back door. Darkness still pervaded here, but a moment later, R2 whizzed out on his heel and the construct's indigo glow bathed the hallway like moonlight filtered through a black sea.

Down there, Cain made a shadowed, huddled shape of twisting limbs and strange angles, but Casper knew that shout so well not even his wretched mind could impose a monster on it. More muttering stumbled down the hall, the occasional shouted word – sometimes familiar, sometimes strange and meaningless – punctuated a sharper movement or a slam of his fist against the wall.

Casper slumped against the doorframe. The fall of tension slipped from his lips in a huff of laughter. Drunk. God knew Casper knew pissed beyond comprehension when he saw it, and Cain was _smashed._

Smashed he could deal with. Smashed was familiar. Maybe ... maybe smashed was his way to play good little housewife and worm his way back in. That'd be sweet for everyone, wouldn't it? Cain waking up all tucked up nice in bed with Casper asleep in his clothes above the covers beside him, artfully positioned so it looked like he'd just dropped there while he sat and patted Cain's head or something.

Casper grinned. He could do that. Or he could leave Cain to knock himself out on the walls and wake up sprawled by the back door in the dirt and the cold. Maybe the idiot would stumble through the house – up the stairs, stagger along gripping the bannister, and one little _slip_ —

A kid could dream, and they'd be sweeter dreams than he'd been having for weeks.

Just as he'd decided to turn and leave Cain to knock his brains out to his heart's content, a more coherent slur tumbled down the corridor. "R—R2. Lights. Lights, please."

Heart lurching up his throat, Casper slipped back around the corner, back against the arch of the kitchen door. A moment later, illumination flooded the corridor, gnawing at Casper's eyes. He gritted his teeth and squeezed them closed. An unwilling smile twitched at his lips as Cain mumbled something that sounded a lot like a thank you before another racketing crash went through the corridor.

Fucking idiot was still polite to his magic butler when he was pissed.

Now what? Like he'd be able to sleep with Cain smashing about in the hallway, and what if he came into the kitchen? Would he even notice if Casper just walked off? Actually, even if he did, what the fuck did it matter? Casper snorted. Stupid. Tentative, he blinked at the sharp light while he knocked his head against the frame. If he walked off right now, he wouldn't even have to look at Cain.

Casper twisted, shifted a little further back inside the kitchen on silent, socked feet, and poked his head around the corner, fingers curled around the doorframe.

His gut dropped.

Smeared across Cain's mouth and throat, soaking the front of his shirt a sodden red, was glistening crimson blood.

Right, so this was where he should run. Or like at least tuck himself nicely back in the kitchen, drag all those covers and pillows over to a tight little corner – perhaps all the way into the pantry, cosy and hidden – and hide there 'til morning came or Cain stumbled into a wall and knocked himself out. _One_ of those things. Get the fuck out of sight, slap out some of that self-preservation instinct, and cower beneath a floorboard like the roach he was. _Something._

But he couldn't move. His heart slammed against his ribs like a mad thing. As if it might break them and run, screaming, free. Bolt off down the corridor like Casper should have. The pulse of blood in his head made it spin, and his nails ached where they bore tiny scratches into the wood.

Because he knew one thing, and that was that once again, that wasn't Cain's blood.

Casper searched in his gut for the nausea, but all he found was tiny, squirming worms of fear.

And curious, delighted intrigue.

Cain sat with his back against the wall, long legs bent at the knees but splayed unevenly off to each side. One arm lay like a dead thing against the floor, scrabbling for a grip it couldn't find every time Cain's balance canted off that way. Each time, he fixed it with a jerk back upright, a moan going through the gasping of his breaths and his other hand grinding deeper into his forehead. His cheeks were flushed, and with the colour that the crimson lifted in his face, those pants of breath looked so hot they should plume with steam in the air.

He was totally _fucked._ Couldn't even sit up straight and his body swayed in a constant motion of trying to stay still. Fuck knew how he'd managed to get home, but he sure as shit didn't look like he was going _anywhere_ now he was here. Casper's wired eyes traced the strewn state of his hair, the rough, untucked mess of his shirt, the heady pink in his cheeks, and all his damn mind kept shoving at him was the image of Cain arching against the bed beneath him while Casper had ground against his cock.

This was it. Confusion at its absolute rock bottom worse. _This is what pretty moments in the night-time get you, Roach. Every goddamn time._

A hiccup echoed down the corridor. Between them, R2 whizzed in a circle then sped back into the kitchen. Another hiccup, and Cain almost toppled with it, the heel of his hand smearing across his eyes and leaving behind a streak of something wet as it fell away. A clear highlight above the gleaming blush of the gore drenching him from the jaw down.

One more hiccup, and the end of this one burst into a wail.

Oh _shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear there's a good reason he's covered in blood. Well, maybe not a good reason, but a reason at least.


	34. O' Heartless Man

And ... Cain burst into tears.

Oh shit _. Right_ before Casper could bolt, there the drunk fucking twat was – sobbing with his head thrown back against the wall, hand fallen to his lap. All the misery that convulsed through his face and throat was bared shamelessly in his drunken isolation. The sheer rawness of it twisted in Casper’s gut, nailing his feet into the floor and his hands into the doorway.

Shit.

It wasn’t anything like Cain. It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t dignified, it wasn’t controlled, and it wasn’t even awkward. The sobs wrenched out of his throat like living things, ugly and wretched as they spilled at once from his nose and mouth in the wet catches of the wails. Tears poured over his cheeks, messy streaks splayed across his twisting head like angel wings beneath the light. Wriggling tracks of tainted peach slid through the smear of blood that painted him a crimson mask.

It looked like it hurt. It looked _like_ hurt, and it fucking hurt watching it. It wasn’t the mad laughter or the furious panic or that cold bite of his voice this morning as he denounced Casper as _wolfsbane._ It was real. Human.

Casper pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, willing his feet to move. _Just fucking piss off, Roach. Isn’t this what you wanted? Didn’t you want to see him break?_

Casper didn’t care about _human._ Never had. Sometimes in the dead of night while Jack cried out the anguish that wrenched through his mind, all Casper could do was sit there, token hand in his hair and machinated nothings spilling from his lips all while he stared into the pit of darkness in the corner of the room. The only bit of darkness, lurking where the wardrobe blocked the thin light that always seeped past the curtains.

And he’d wondered when it would stop, when the drink would kick in enough that Jack would pass out. Pray he’d drunk enough to get there. Could he crawl out of bed and take a hit? Get so fucking high that the dark corner turned into a dream of slurred warmth, and the tears were nothing but white noise behind the slow pump of his heart searching for euphoria.

And he wondered whether under this skin, he was still human.

No matter that he knew better than ever before that he wasn’t, the echoes of his footsteps still rung around that hollow hall, stamped in the places that Cain’s tears didn’t fill. His fingers trailed along the whitewashed grit of the wall, and even the clatter of the ghoul’s clawed feet as it bounded down the hall didn’t break Cain out of his misery.

His grief.

_For all those little lost boys haunting the shadowed spaces of his mind._

A slow, cold breeze drifted under the back door, ruffling through Casper’s hair. Beneath the skewed doormat, an arcane circle poked out, and that draft put eddies through the black smoke that still seeped from each line etched into the wood.

Another one. Casper wondered how many strange circles were hidden in back rooms and beneath carpets like lost portals to another world.

The ghoul scratched at it, a whine low in its throat – not a scrabble, but with purpose as if it sought to scratch new lines into the intricate pattern. A deeper chill crept into Casper’s gut, one that twitched where it lay, scratching at the walls of his stomach with vicious white claws.

“R2,” Casper whispered, “could I have a knife?”

Cain cried behind him, and no matter how much the sounds ripped at Casper’s chest, he couldn’t make himself take his eyes off that circle until the construct zipped up behind him, long, wicked kitchen knife bobbing above its head. Casper snatched it, crouched down, and hacked at the circle until with a puff of rot in the air so sickly sweet it made him gag, no more smoke seeped from the lines.

The ghoul seemed pleased. Stupid creature scampered off up the hallway, springing between the walls, and Casper had to press his lips tight against laughter.

His balls looked fucking ridiculous swinging about like that.

A fresh wail wrenched through the corridor, and the laughter died. Some strange lump lodged in Casper’s throat, right high up above where it still scratched and burned when he spoke. Casper twisted around onto his hands and knees, and it put him almost in Cain’s lap. The corridor was so narrow that if Cain slumped anymore and stretched his legs, they’d touch the opposite wall. The draft off the back door made Casper twitchy, and the corridor went on too long, a throat swallowed up by shadows where the lights didn’t reach.

It was what it was. No matter how much that sensible bit at the back of his skull itched for it, he couldn’t make himself get up. Did that make him brave? Or did it just make him even more the wet fucking coward that he couldn’t make himself get up and run?

This close, with the decay wafting off the circle gone, copper clogged the air. Cain stunk of it. It was stuck to his skin and soaked into his shirt. Smears of it went across the bottom of it and gleamed on his trousers where he must have wiped the worst off his rust-stained hands. It eased back into tacky gore at his wrists but stopped in splatters and sprays before it reached the messily rolled cuffs of his shirt.

This was stupid. Cain had _clearly_ killed someone. No other way he was getting that much blood _dripping_ from him. _Logically,_ Casper knew murder equalled bad person equalled _definitely_ deserved to be crying in a hallway by himself and hopefully choking on his vomit. Hell, nutso kidnapper alone deserved it by Casper’s book.

Casper the Cowardly Lion gnawed on the inside of his mouth, scowling at Cain and his stupid, heart-wrenching tears, and hey, maybe he could be the lion after all. Maybe he could get his fucking feet and piss off down the hall. One little night of praying for it, and if Cain still woke up tomorrow, Casper could pretend he hadn’t seen shit and get back to the game the right way. Take it slow. Prove bit by bit he wasn’t wolfsbane until he ripped out Cain’s heart for good.

But he’d already said it, hadn’t he? The lion was the bravest person Dorothy knew, and he sure as fuck wasn’t Casper.

With a sigh, Casper shuffled the last little bit of distance and sat back on his heels. Cain jerked out of his wobble, and his bent leg slapped down onto Casper’s thighs. A mumbled shout; his eyes flew open, hands scrabbling at the skirting board until his hazy eyes landed on Casper. The sharp nutty brown of them was murky with drink, and they slipped and slid like sunlight nosing its way through water clogged up by sediment and dying leaves.

They still had to be the most beautiful eyes Casper had ever seen. Especially when Cain’s lips trembled and they filled up with tears again. The light seemed to dance in them as they welled across his waterline, a swell of diamond dew caught across his eyelashes in the indrawn breath while he reached for Casper’s face.

Everything was silent but for the whistle of the breeze.

Of course the idiot was totally fucked, so the moment lasted right up until his pawing hand nearly took Casper’s eye out. Casper flinched back from it and Cain’s lip gave a pitiful wobble that looked so bizarre against the gore staining his face that Casper could only stare in fascinated horror as Cain fell off the edge again and burst into tears.

“Shit.”

What was he even meant to do? Pat Cain’s head? _There’s a good psycho kidnapping murderer. It’s all okay._ Casper floundered, and each sob just got its claws and dug them into his heart and tore at it, and the rip twisted tighter and tighter until with a gasp, a hitching in his own chest, Casper just … gave in.

Cold radiated off Cain when Casper fell into him, arms thrown around his shoulders and his face buried in Cain’s throat. Somehow it was better that the blood wasn’t warm while it still smeared tacky against his cheek and sunk into his t-shirt. If it wasn’t for the metallic bitterness squirming down his throat, he could pretend it was something else. Melted ice cream. A spilt drink.

No matter how drunk he was, Cain’s floundering hands still found Casper. They scratched at his back then flattened there, pawing flat-palmed all across the expanse as if pressing the entirety of Casper into him would ensure he never left. There was something desperate to the action, a conscious strike beneath the uncontrolled sobs that burst from his lips. His chest heaved beneath Casper’s, and Casper clung to him like they were both ships in the ocean, cast adrift and battered by each crashing wave of the storm.

And maybe that was the best metaphor he’d come up with for them the whole goddamn time.

“Cassie.” Cain moaned the word, his slur trapping reverberations in his throat, ones Casper felt against his cheek. His head stayed tipped back, as if anything but cold air across his face and the total exposure of his misery would suffocate him. “Cassie, baby, I’m sorry. I’m—I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t lose you, Cassie. I love you. I just wanted to make it all better. I—I just wanted it to be good.”

It was all he kept saying, over and over again. The drunkard’s prayer knelt to worship at the altar of mad obsession. Casper choked on the raw honesty, his own breath catching in his throat, a pain wrenching deep through his chest where his heart should be.

Warmth gathered where they held each other now, and it was like basking in the belly of the beast.

In the end, the tin man had a heart. Maybe his chest was nothing but hollow fucking metal and all those demons in his skull jeered otherwise, but it was there, and maybe just like any other flesh and blood heart, it could only take so much before it broke.

Still those hands pressed him tight, and in that moment, Casper couldn’t breathe.

In that moment, Casper belonged to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean I don't know if it's the done thing to praise your own writing, but I _seriously_ love those passages at the end. The Wizard of Oz metaphor turned out so perfect for these two! Does anyone else have some favourite parts of Stains now we're past the halfway line?


	35. Bambi

It took a long, long time for Cain to stop crying, longer still before Casper could prise himself away, and like his life couldn’t get any grosser, prising himself away meant the slow, sick peel of his cheek from Cain’s throat, stuck together by drying blood. Casper gagged as he did it and rubbed at his cheek with his t-shirt as soon as he was sat up and free.

Most of the nausea vanished when his eyes actually found Cain’s face. Tear tracks wound through the mask of blood, but the misery that went with them hadn’t stuck. Hazed with drink, and that breathless grin lay so sloppy around the edges that you could tell he was pissed from that alone. Not that it mattered a fucking damn because no matter the shape of it, the emotion behind it shone so bright and warm that it stole Casper’s breath away. A hand, buried right in his chest and clutching his heart in a grip made of clouds and bliss.

That brush of golden in Cain’s eyes, breathless as he drunk up the sight of his angel knelt beside him, and _fuck,_ Casper had missed that look so fucking much he could cry.

His lips pressed together, trembling against his will, and with a tight gasp that stung in his throat, Casper clambered up to his feet.

Cain lurched after him, arm outstretched and his eyes big and doey and frantic. “Cassie—”

Fucking hell, why did he have to look like that? A wry smile twitched at Casper’s lips and he grasped Cain’s hand. Warm from the heat that had come off Casper’s back, but it stopped too soon beneath the surface to feel quite real. “You’re coming with me, asshole, don’t worry. Let’s go to bed.”

“I—” Cain’s eyes trailed up and down the corridor and fluttered shut just as they came back to Casper. With a nauseated shiver, he opened them again, imploring. “I don’t think I can get up, Cassie. I drunk too much.” Cain’s lower lip stuck out as his head lolled back against the wall, and Casper pressed down on the weird little flutter in his chest. Fucking dick. “I feel _awful._ ”

Bullshit, obviously. They always could get up if you tried hard enough, and Casper had done this with Jack so many times he might as well stamp it across his forehead. _Professional drunk fuck handler – only accepting applications from men who’re no fucking good for me._ Jack was a damn sight heavier than Cain as well. A damn sight meaner too, especially recently, and that meant wrestling with his sour tongue as well as the weight of his body.

Not so with Cain. Instead of burning the tip of his tongue black, everything bad had vanished under the blanket of stars the drink cast over his mind, and here he was, right back to the awestruck man who hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Casper while they ate beneath the stars.

Casper tried to not let himself forget that it was just the drink as he got his arm around Cain’s waist, and the drunk prick swayed like a boneless beanpole above him.

Cain slumped against him while they stumbled down the hallway, his arm tightening around Casper’s shoulder. The chill of his breath puffed against Casper’s neck as Cain nuzzled at the space behind his ear, murmuring senseless nothings in a foreign language.

It was really, _really_ hard to remember that it was just the drink.

At one point, Casper called R2 for a glass of water and pressed it carefully into Cain’s hand when the idiot kept insisting he could drink it. The second Casper let go, Cain took one drowsy blink and let it fall from his hand.

Both of them burst into laughter as it shattered on the floor.

“Now who needs a fucking sippy cup? Come on, nutjob. Get walking.”

Cain pressed his cheek against the top of Casper’s head. “Can mine have pandas on it?”

Jesus fuck, why did he have to be such an endearing drunk?

By the time they wound all the way through the house up to Cain’s room, Casper’s muscles ached as if he’d been walking for miles. The pitch black of the sky outside the window made a mocking affront to his sense of time. To call Cain a gazelle when he was drunk made a grave insult to the grace of a gazelle; he was way more like some baby colt taking its first steps – all goddamn _legs,_ and they went down in a tangle of them at least five times on the trip.

And each time Cain had laughed so hard or looked so adorably pitiful moaning about it that Casper couldn’t even make himself pissed about this motley crew bruises assembling across his knees and elbows and ass.

Couldn’t make himself feel shit but the twirl of bubbly warmth fizzing in his chest and the way the rest of the world just sort of faded away to stars and laughter as they stumbled up the stairs.

Casper took them straight through the bedroom into the vast _en suite_ adjoining it. The light dazzled off the polished marble skimming the floors and walls. A skein of glass at the far end beckoned into a shower whose slick slate walls winked with the silver caps of jets.

“Cassie?”

The mumble came further from his ear than usual, and Casper paused halfway across the room.

A mirror spread across the wall to their right, plastered above the graceful scoop of the wide sink. The blood smothering Cain’s face and chest was dull now, barely catching the gleam of the lights, but it’d stayed sticky enough that Casper’s hair was gummed up with it, stuck up at a stupid angle from each time Cain had rubbed his face there with a sound a little like a purr brewing in his chest. Dark circles cupped Casper’s eyes, sallow hollows in his face, but something about the look of himself made his heart skip.

It was a little too much like looking at a person instead of a corpse.

Cain’s eyes slithered off their tangled reflections with the loll of his head, but drunk prick was trying his best. He pointed one long finger at the pair of them while he laid his head atop of Casper’s, and a grin spread broad and loose across his face. “I want that, Cassie. Just that. _Forever_.”

A tightness clutched at Casper’s throat, warmth blooming in his chest, and he tore his eyes from the mirror. Not quite quick enough to unsee the expression on his face. He’d smiled. Like a fucking idiot, he’d smiled, a quick, breathless grin catching like a gasp across his lips.

Shit.

Casper yanked at Cain’s waist, hauling him over to the toilet. “Come on, idiot. You need a shower.”

The toilet seat clattered as Cain dropped on it, and his head skimmed grimacing close to smashing against the tile behind him. He sprawled there, legs wide and his loose hands dropped between them. Blood plastered his front and showed between his teeth when he grinned.

Casper gulped down the dryness in his throat.

“Are you—” Cain’s tongue stumbled over the slur and he blinked hard, frowning between Casper and somewhere vaguely in the direction of the shower. “The…” A sharp edge came into his eye, and he sat up, nearly tumbling forward off the seat. “You have to come in with me.”

He said it with such breathless intensity, as if nothing was more important in the world than Casper standing with him while hot water poured over their skin and steam slid across their tongues and purified their lungs, that nothing ever had been, nor would it ever be.

Was he going to get in the shower with Cain? The sensible answer was no, obviously. Really, he should dump the idiot in bed and piss off, no shower involved.

But when was Casper ever sensible? Roach Boy was a fawning insectile coward, and with the side of his neck still tingling from Cain’s lips, no part of Casper could bear to put him in bed and just _leave._ So if Casper was getting into bed with Cain, he sure as fuck wasn’t doing it with the prick covered in blood.

It’d be nice. The shower was hot, and his hair was gross too, but…

Casper hissed a breath between his teeth, tearing his eyes away. But nothing. It was fucking stupid and Casper was fucking poison, and he should just leave.

Another clatter. On instinct honed to a blade by Jack’s eternal drunken misadventures, Casper lunged forward. He caught Cain under the arms just before he tumbled face first smack onto the tiles. Shame, ‘cause that’d be hilarious. Maybe he’d have even knocked some teeth out and gotten some of his own fucking blood mixed up in that mess painting his face.

Then he’d probably _cry_ about it, and Casper would have to pat his head and make him feel better, and it’d be a gazillion times worse than just getting in the shower with the stupid fuck.

Slumped against his chest, Cain tugged at Casper’s sleeve and made big brown eyes up at him – and seriously, this fucking psycho murderer had no right looking so adorable. The stupid little flutter of his heart drove home the last nail in the coffin of Casper’s pretend morality.

“Please?” Cain rubbed his cheek rubbed against Casper’s t-shirt. Rust streaked across the white part of the print. “I miss you, Cassie. Y—You always used to—”

The meandering path of those words snagged at a different part of his chest. A line pulled taut to snare his lungs so tight they burned.

“Fine.” Casper shoved Cain back on the toilet seat. His mouth had gone dry. The crimson of the blood smouldered beneath the searing lights. “ _Fine_ , but I’m keeping my pants on.”

The grin that broke across Cain’s face was a slice of sunlight through the hell painted down his chest. Casper did his best not to look at it while he got Cain and then himself undressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short one today, but let me tell you guys I am h y p e d for this shower scene next time. It's a gem.


	36. Hot Water

Casper whacked the shower up just high enough that it stung his skin, a pleasant burning that scoured away the marks of the day. His ribs and his gut had been padding out the first couple of weeks he’d been here, but gauntness haunted the spaces again as if he was nothing but skin pulled across ragged taxidermy.

Maybe Cain looked a little thinner as well as Casper helped him into the shower. Hollows where he’d been all smooth edges. The thick coating of gore stopped where his shirt came together just below the dip between his collarbones, but rust still stained his skin down to his stomach. As soon as the gushing water touched it, the blood spilled down his front in trails of crimson that eased to sweet, blushing pink.

There was a seat at the edge of the shower. Cain had shrugged when Casper had asked _why,_ but he’d sat on the stone shelf enough times. The jets were level with his shoulders, and it got so many of aches and pains out just letting them roll across his muscles and fill them with dozy heat. Casper dumped Cain there now, and he slumped the same way he had on the toilet. A little more sober than earlier, then, because at least now he could sit upright.

Cain pointed at the dizzying array of shower products stacked neatly on the broad shelves, an imperious motion ruined by the way his whole body swayed and a slur mulled his voice to a stop-start drawl. “The yell— _yellow_ one first.”

A grin twitched at Casper’s lips as he reached up, fingers plucking at the wide showerhead to pull it a little more toward Cain. The water gushed over him, filling his nose and seeping between his teeth. His boxers were sodden already, clinging to his skin and gathering runnels of water and cloth in weird places, but hey, at least he wasn’t totally naked in the shower with this nutjob.

Ever the gentleman, Cain didn’t spare the slightest glance for however Casper’s ass looked in this wet mess underwear. Dazzled, he smiled up at the failing scowl Casper shot over his shoulder like it were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“The yellow one, Cas.”

“Fuck off, I’m not doing your whole hair care routine.”

“Well, why _else_ am I in the shower? It has to be the yellow one first, else it dries too flat.”

Well, there was Casper’s answer on why dickhead had such perfect hair. Casper turned to him, the water thundering across his shoulders, and with a slow, lingering finger, he traced a line over his lips and his chin, his throat, and down to his bellybutton. Cain’s eyes followed it with a struggling alacrity.

“You’ve got a little blood everywhere, dickhead. I’m washing it off.”

Cain’s eyes widened, although he wavered in and out of the expression a little as his fingers wove their way up to his chin. They came away bloody as the gore regained its lustre in the steam that filled the air.

“Oh.” Cain dragged his hand over his mouth and throat as if just a brush of his hand would _ever_ wipe that mess away, and then leant out far enough that Casper had to hold his shoulders steady while he stuck his hand under the shower stream. “I—I just, ah—I just cut myself—”

Why couldn’t Casper help grinning at that? “Shaving, yeah. For such a good liar, you’re an awful liar, you know that? Come on, which one’s Blood Begone, or whatever the fuck you got for it?”

Cain jabbed his finger again. “The purple one.”

Like Casper had _actually_ been expecting him to have some specific gore-cleansing shower gel. Fucking hell. Some fuck off abominable warmth curled up in his chest as he reached for a bottle— “Not _that_ one. Purple, Cassie, not _lilac—_ ” then for a different one, and this stupid grin wouldn’t smear off his face. Maybe it was just the heat. Just that ridiculous dopey smile brightening up Cain’s face.

The scent of pine drifted into the air as Casper squeezed a dollop of the creamy soap into his hand, infusing the steam with a heady pungency that made his head whirl. Once he had a good handful of it, he knelt down between Cain’s splayed knees and set the bottle onto the seat beside him.

Cain frowned at him. His hair was still only half-wet, and little tendrils stuck to his forehead, making stuck-seaweed of it above his puckered brows. “Cas,” he said plaintively, “I _told_ you I don’t want—”

“Fuck off, idiot. I’m just washing your face.”

“Whatever for?”

Grinning, Casper rubbed his palms together and shuffled forward a bit. The stream of the shower only hit his feet now, the thunder of the water hot and itchy against his soles. “Because you look like you’ve gone swimming in a fucking corpse.”

That slow, dopey comprehension fluttered through Cain’s face again, and his hand swum up to swipe over his jaw and down his throat, dragging through the crimson and leaving rivulets of water coursing through the sticky mess in their wake. His eyes widened, and this close Casper got a waft of copper burning through the alpine kiss.

“Oh _cock._ ” Cain rubbed his fingers together then patted down his chest, gathering more blood stains across his palm. “Bloody _…_ ” He held his hand out, fingers splayed, and burst into laughter. “Did I—Is it everywhere? Did I ruin my shirt, Cassie? I _just_ bought that, you know – I mean I bought it _months_ ago, but I _just_ bought it – it was so expensive!”

A grin bloomed across Casper’s lips, one that lifted a little like the way a flower opens its head toward the warmth of the dopey sun. Drunk fucking idiot.

“Look at you.” The murmur slipped out without thought, and Casper shook his head as he placed his soapy hands against Cain’s chest, fingers splayed wide. The blood touched the suds pink in a breath, like it drank all the badness out of his skin and turned it to peach-tinted bliss. “You’re so fucking good at pretending nothing’s wrong, even—” the word caught in his throat, tight, sharp— “e—even though it’s all just falling apart. It’s stupid.” Casper glared at him, and it felt like the water trickling over his cheeks must gleam across his eyes. “ _You’re_ stupid.”

Cain didn’t say anything, any words lost on a gasp as Casper slid his hands over the smooth planes of Cain’s chest. Warmth gathered low in Casper’s belly, something sticky, tinged with sugar, and he let himself laugh. It was sweet, the way Cain’s eyes fluttered closed, the soft hum he let out as his head knocked back against the wall. Probably a little too hard, but the idiot could worry about that bruise in the morning.

Bit by bit, Casper worked the blood out of Cain’s skin, across his chest and where it was thicker over his throat. When his fingers crept over Cain’s jawline, splaying over the sangria stains on his cheeks, the gasp broke to a groan, low and lovely in his throat.

The sound froze every inch of Casper, every nerve and every cell and each trickle of blood in his veins – still. The shower rushed against his feet, an itch lifting across the delicate skin, but if he moved, these twinkling stars that danced on vapour in the glow of the bathroom lights, the taste of sugar on his tongue and the quiet rapture suffusing Cain’s gorgeous face – all that sweetness would vanish, will o’ wisps lost to a turn of the air.

The only thing he moved was his hands, gliding slow circles laden with soap and blood over Cain’s face. Light stubble scratched at the tips of his fingers, and each of Cain’s heavy breaths went through his whole jaw, a ragged part of his lips and drawing of his breath, a prayer in each hitch that broke through the susurrus rush of the shower. Soft joy in a single, precious sound.

Sometime, without Casper quite realising it, Cain’s legs had come together. His thighs pressed against Casper’s sides, digging into the space beneath his ribs. It went beyond physical, a swell like Cain’s very presence filled some gasping hollow behind that cage. A cage that, until Cain had stepped with golden eyes and a voice like sin into Casper’s life, had been nothing but dust and cobwebs and hope worn thin. It was arms wrapped around him and the promise of everything Cain ever could’ve been and everything Casper still wished he could be, painted in angel-cream watercolour beneath the shower-stream light.

It felt so right that Casper couldn’t breathe.

Casper’s fingertips brushed across his lips, and Cain spoke, the tumble of words tight and high with every inch of feeling built in this pine-stained air.

“I love you, Cassie. I bloody hate every single bit of myself but the part that loves you, and now s—sometimes, I hate that part as well. If I don’t even have that one fucking piece of goodness, what am I? What’s left?”

Each slurred vowel Casper felt as a bow beneath his fingertips, each syllable in an angel’s breath. Cain hiccupped, and his lips twisted under Casper’s touch, tears like dew welling in his eyes.

How could Casper ever bear to see him cry?

Casper splayed his hands over the tension in Cain’s cheeks. His heart lunged up his throat as he dug his fingers into the space behind Cain’s jaw and kissed him.

A gasp against his lips, breath full of the stink of copper, and Casper kept his lips tight, parting only to draw Cain into the kiss. Cain’s lips tasted of soap, and that soap tasted _nothing_ like pine, but it slicked the kiss to bitter heaven.

_What the fuck are you doing, Roach? What the—_

He didn’t care.

The water hammered hot against the soles of his feet. Cain’s long fingers tangled through his hair, and Casper’s whole being flew. Ecstasy nestled in his chest as those lips moved slick against his. None of it mattered – nothing before, nothing after, just the way that Cain pressed so desperately close into each break of Casper’s lips as if he couldn’t bear to lose him. Just the arm around Casper’s waist hauling his weight off his knees, and the short, sharp hitches in Cain’s breath full of gore.

The space beneath Casper’s eyes ached. It ached with the same stinging goodness that put knots through his chest and wrapped his throat up in thorns, and the only bit of breath he had left was to whimper into that kiss—

_Please never let me go._

A grunt against Casper’s lips was the only warning he got before the weightlessness from Cain’s grip turned to gravity clawing at his knees. Casper groped for a hold as big drunk idiot’s _entire_ weight dropped on his shoulders – Cain scrabbling at him like _he_ was some kind of fucking upright fixture – but Casper's hands met thin air.

Seconds later his shoulders cracked against the floor and Cain fell on top of him in some tangle of Bambi limbs. Only the fingers that’d wrenched half his goddamn hair out saved his head from going splat.

Casper groaned, twisting his legs from under him. The shower drain swirled beneath his head, bathing his skin in a soft current of warmth. The hardness of the tiles at his back made an oxymoron to Cain sprawled across his chest and nuzzling his fucking neck.

 _Shit,_ this guy was heavy.

It took a good lot of shoving to get Cain to roll off him, and Casper panted through his grin as he got to his feet again. His back already throbbed, but Cain’s incoherent complaints and the big doe eyes he cast up from the floor sure sat against the promise of the ache like a hot flannel.

A hot _wet_ flannel. Like, the soggiest flannel that had ever existed, and Casper was going to mock Cain _relentlessly_ for the pout he had on right now, but _shit…_

Grinning, Casper shook his head and grabbed the yellow bottle off the shelf. _Let’s see if this works wonders._ The dollop he squirted on his palm smelt like vanilla, and it foamed like a dream as Casper worked it into his scalp. _Rich boy hair here we come._

From the floor, Cain gazed at him, starry-eyed, and with careful pronunciation around each syllable, said, “You’re beautiful.”

And Casper _literally_ just could not stop smiling. Like at this point, these aching cheeks were a curse for life.

“Fuck off, you drunk prick.”

“One might even say, Cassie, that you’re _exquisite._ ”

“You know, if you hadn’t kidnapped me, I’d probably say I love you right now.”

Cain looked satisfied with that, and he watched Casper with a grin while he worked vanilla goodness through his hair. Casper didn’t think it’d ever felt lighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cain is such an adorable sappy git and cassie is _falling_ for it
> 
> i've been wanting to write them kissing again for so long ;_; 
> 
> after the next chapter, i've reached the end of the couple of sequences i wrote for act two, and we're back on track for the original plot - this section, between cassie shouting at cain out in the garden, visiting the city, and drunk-boi, has done wonders for the plot, honestly. But has it dragged for any of you? I did get a little wordy ahahaa


	37. Thin Morning Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys wake up together, and Casper digs to find out what had Cain such a bloody mess the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I missed Monday's upload everyone! This chapter just turned into something about 2k longer than appropriate and I just couldn't get it edited by Monday. I wish this platform had an announcement system... 
> 
> But, here it is! (A day late again because I forgot it was Friday yesterday) and I've actually written everything from here onward so hopefully this won't happen again!

Cain woke exactly the way Casper expected – with a groan hastily followed by a war with the covers as he scrambled out of bed and ran to the bathroom. Humming, Casper nestled deeper into the covers while Cain vomited noisily in the _en suite._

Nice to know he was human enough to get hangovers like the rest of them.

Casper had been awake for a while, dozy beneath the covers. His bones were full of lethargy and it was warm here. Soft. Safe. Raindrops pattered white noise against the window and the pleasant nattering of the droplets smoothed out Casper's thoughts.

Cain had curled around Casper in his sleep – knees in the crook of his and his face nestled into Casper's hair. Slow breaths ruffled it, still tinged with lingering copper. The heat gathered between them had sunk into his skin. A little clammy, but nothing Casper minded too much.

Hey, maybe if he let his mind slip away to a daydream, it'd be like he was here forever.

And it sort of was, for a bit, until the alcohol ghosts lingering in Cain's system demanded exorcism.

Eventually, the retching stopped. The flush of the toilet didn't quite drown out the low, miserable moan that followed. Casper smiled behind the covers and waited for the flow of water to finish before he called out, his hoarse voice creaky and strange in the quiet.

"You want anything?"

A loud hiccup drifted out the bathroom. " _No._ "

"You want me to get R2 to get you breakfast?"

" _God_ no."

Casper snickered and rolled onto his back. The sheets brushed across the nape of his neck and ran silken fingers down his spine. The raindrops made teartracks over the windows, veiling the way the hills trickled away to kiss the nadir of the grey sky. The monochrome brush of the light across Cain's vast room was tranquil, still. "Want me to come in there?"

"No." That word came out sour, reluctant. "Want you to go away if you're just going to be an arse."

Casper sighed. "Cain, I'm not…" That wasn't going to work. Casper rubbed his hands over his cheeks, a small groan rattling in his throat. "Give me a chance?"

He never replied, but he also didn't say _leave_ , so Casper lounged amongst the sea of sheets watching the maze the rain made across the window. Waited in the peace and the warmth until, eventually, the door cracked open and Cain slipped out. He crept across the room as if even the creak of his bones would wince through his skull, and his breath smelled of mint when he crawled into bed. A weariness gathered across his features, vivid in the droop of his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks.

Shit, he really was fucking beautiful.

A pout gathered on Cain's lips as he drew the covers around him, and Casper let him have more than usual to bundle all the way up to his shoulders and above his head. Fucking adorable.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Cain asked, a petulant note in his voice.

And this time Casper listened to The Plan. He folded his arm behind his head and grinned down at Cain. "You kinda look like if snowmen had supermodels."

"That doesn't even make sense."

The grudging twitch around Cain's lips said it didn't matter too much to him anyway. Just looking at him put warmth in Casper's belly like a cat curled there, purring vibrating out to the tips of his fingers and curling his toes. His lips tingled, the memory of the kiss and the bitter taste of not-pine fresh as the day seeping into the room.

He wanted to regret it, but … even if Cain remembered, it only helped. It'd been sweet and soft and lovely, and all the things Casper should pretend to be.

The warmth bloomed higher, and Casper had to bite his lip to stop himself grinning.

For a long time that was that. The quiet and Cain's gaze lingering on the canopy, until slow, with a long shuddering breath, Cain lifted himself up a little, shedding the cocoon of covers, and brushed a lock of hair back from Casper’s forehead.

"I'm very sorry I shouted at you, you know, Cassie?" A wry smile touching Cain's lips, and he sniffed, all wet eyes and wetter words. “If I didn't feel so awful, I'd talk about how badly you get under my skin and how much you drive me _crazy,_ but it doesn't matter. Not really. Just know I’m going to do better and I’m sorry.”

They were simple words but … they were the right ones. Maybe it was because in Cain’s gleaming eyes, there was something that Casper had never seen in all the times the same old spiel poured from Jack’s lips. No self-loathing, just sincerity and a quiet determination.

Cain’s fingers fiddled with strands of Casper’s hair, and he wore the same hopeful smile as he had when Casper had stepped into his study with the cake and the hot chocolate before he’d doused all that kindness in black acid.

Casper forced all this sappy _wet_ down out of his chest, and made himself smile, tilting his head into Cain's touch. Something like surprise flickered across Cain's face as he did, and it passed into the first breaths of something golden.

It was even better seeing that expression when he wasn't smashed.

"I'll forgive you. But"—Casper cut Cain off with a finger against his parted lips, grinning—"you have to tell me what happened to you last night."

"Last…" The word breathed chill air across Casper's finger and a little furrow dug out between Cain's brows. "What? Did I—I didn't do something to—"

This time Cain broke his own words off. The pattering of rain against the window filled the silence as his face fell and drew out to dread. Trembling a little, his fingers moved from the ends of Casper's hair to brush across his face, and the moment he touched his lips, he flinched. Something unreadable passed over his face, and Cain dropped, groaning, onto his back and pulled the covers up over his face.

"Oh _god,_ Cas." His words were muffled behind the thick covers, nothing but a tuft of brown hair showing above them, a soft nutty colour against the sunlit white of the sheets. His fingers gripped the edge of the duvet, thick rust still stuck beneath Cain's neat nails. The crescents winked at Casper, a little reminder that it hadn't all been a dream.

Shaking his head, Casper tugged at the top of the duvet, but Cain didn't loosen his grip, just made a sound of complaint and pulled it higher so that even his hair was hidden.

" _Cain_ , come on."

Still muffled, Cain said, "Leave off."

"There's no fucking way you're getting out of explaining that one."

"My head hurts!"

So endearing drunk Cain became adorable hungover Cain – nice to know. That purring warmth gathered in his chest again, all delicious and tingly, the sigh of effervescence coming off it lifting a grin to Casper's face.

With little tugs on the covers, Casper eased himself into the dip in the mattress beside Cain. His skin lay against Casper's stomach like a warm drink, coffee gone just a little too cool, and all the muscles in Cain's side went taut as Casper settled against them. Cain's arm flinched beneath the covers as Casper laid his head on it, the duvet gathered around his throat and under his arm like clouds scented with pine and the softest relic of the way the air tickled your nose while snow fell.

Casper murmured his words just loud enough for them to reach Cain through the covers, putting the teasing lilt in them as strong as he could. "Did you cut yourself shaving?"

"Piss off, Cas."

"I'm not forgiving you if you don't tell me."

Cain groaned, rolling a little deeper into Casper's body. His long legs curled up, knocking a little against Casper's, and the weight against him had Casper's breath catching, some stupid little shiver up his spine. Cain's knee rested just against Casper's shins, bone against bone. The closeness – the _almost but not quite-ness_ – of the touch clutched everything still – a suspension tightening his chest that he felt in soft tremors through the contact.

The moment broke on the tart edge of Cain's voice. Cain was always _tart_ with his words, but Casper had never loved how it sounded quite so much as right now, the middle taut and sulky and _cute._ "It's not so bad as you think, you know."

Casper let his eyes drift to the window, an idle smile playing across his mouth. The loose cotton of the covers snagged on his fingers as he trailed them over the rise of Cain's nose and the dip of his throat. "I don't think there's much left that you can do that'll surprise me, Cain. Even less if you really want to make me sick with it."

The laugh Cain barked raked through his ribcage. _Bitter,_ and it clashed violently against this thin morning light. "Cas, love, the things I've done would blacken your lungs. If I wore my sins on my skin, the devil that walked the streets would be a creature made of ash and desecration, and all would crumble to ruin in the wake of the miasmic decay that seeps out of my bones."

 _Alright_ , so hungover Cain was a total drama queen as well. Cute.

Casper pulled at the top of the covers again, and this time, Cain let them slip from his grip. His eyebrows drew up in the middle, and as Casper tucked them around his chin, his eyes just about shone, a weak periwinkle gleam in the brown.

Casper plucked at Cain's lower lip. "Spit it out."

"Well—" Cain huffed, his gaze slipping off to the vast window. The breath of radiance across his features as his head tilted had Casper's breath catching in his throat, and the way the grey light sat beneath his skin like he wasn't quite human felt like a glimpse of divinity.

Perfection.

 _Jesus fuck, Roach Boy, why don't you just get down on your knee and serenade him?_ This was _stupid,_ but it was early and quiet and the silence full of nothing but white noise and the slight murmur of Cain's pulse beneath his ear. _Excuses._

"So," Cain said, "well, I went out and got pissed—"

Casper snorted. "Obviously."

"Yes, _obviously._ But I did that first. Then—well, I'm a fairly, ah … _well known_ face amongst people like me—"

Grinning, Casper plucked at his lip again. "Rich kidnappers involved in Fortune 500 companies?"

The glower Cain shot him broke up as soon as his gaze snagged on Casper's grin, although he managed to keep the arch tone when he replied, " _No._ Sorcerers, you twat. And sorcery is a bit of a cutthroat field, so when some…" Cain's nose wrinkled a touch, "some pathetic no-name sorcerer caught sight of me stumbling drunk, they decided it was a rather good time to get a shot in. Unfortunately for them it _wasn't_."

"Fucking hell." Casper wriggled in closer to Cain's side to get a better look at his face. "What'd you do, rip their throat out?"

"God no! I just rotted their brain straight out. I mean it was a little weak on precision with how pissed I was, so it was more like skull and shoulders, but you get the idea."

Casper wasn't sure if he _did_ get the idea. Probably because of how mind-boggling it was that Cain had been _that_ drunk, and as far as Casper could tell, not even taken a wound from another sorcerer getting the jump on him. Plus he wasn't even getting into whatever the fuck this rotting was.

"And the blood?"

"Well I ate his heart, obviously. No point letting it go to waste."

A chill trickled down Casper's spine. He was serious. That blood-soaked nightmare of last night took another edge now – a vision in guttering black and crimson, ribs an eviscerated cavern and streetlights flashing against slick white as Cain's teeth tore through flesh.

Casper choked on something. Air or this knotting tightness in his throat. Cain's eyes trailed back to him from the window, and the easy expression faltered as soon as he caught Casper's face. His arm slid around Casper's shoulder and his fingers – fingers that had dug through bone and tendon and sunk into soft, throbbing tissue – pressed against Casper's shoulder.

"Cas, are you alright?"

The words came out croaking, strangled. "How is that _obvious_?"

A frown drew Cain's brows together and he shifted back from Casper a little. "Well, they were bloody attempting murder for mine, so excuse me if it didn't exactly bother—"

"But—" Casper rubbed his hands over his face. Shit. That fucking image wouldn't go away. Cain shuddering with laughter as the blood spurted over his chin. "What's the fucking _point_?"

Cain considered that for a moment, a flicker of loosening around his brow and a slight parting of his lips as if Casper had just posed him some academic uncertainty. "I mean… I _suppose_ it wasn't exactly worth _—_ Oh, wait! Bloody hell, did I—" Cain burst into laughter, and he drew Casper in closer, fingers toying with the ends of Casper's hair. "Did I not tell you?"

Considering Casper was getting worked up about nutjob here snacking on hearts, he probably should've jerked away from that touch instead of just glowering. But the way the chill off Cain's fingertips tickled his skin, brushing against the soft hairs that curled behind Casper's ear…

Casper settled for the glower, and even that didn't come out very well considering that Cain just _laughed_ again. Sunshine danced in his eyes as he smiled down at Casper. "My _deepest_ apologies, love." And no matter how grave that tone, he didn't sound sorry at all. "I think I got a bit pissed to finish your intro to sorcery back when."

"What, is it wizard etiquette to pull a Hannibal on your mortal enemies?"

"Sorcerer," Cain said lightly, "but no, so I told you before that sorcerers are born with a given magical capacity?"

Casper nodded, rubbing his cheek against Cain's arm. A little warmth had lifted again in his chest, something that pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and cast a soft smile over his lips. The slow measure of Cain's voice twined so lovely with the rain, and the tingling mint of his breath drifted over Casper's nose and lips.

God, this was going to be easy. Pretending with Cain was like breathing.

"Very good." The words were so darkly indulgent that a shiver ran down Casper's spine. "Now, this is the truth for many, but not for all. Not for those with knowledge of it. See, there is a way to steal power from another sorcerer, and that way is to—"

Casper finished the words on an outdrawn breath. "Eat their heart."

"Exactly."

Cain's fingers trailed back through Casper's hair. The morning sun cast his skin to marble, and it glistened with the stuttering hologram Casper's mind pasted across his face. Blood, sputtering from between his teeth cast brilliant claret by the rain-clogged sunlight, trickling over his lips and down his cheek and pooling on the pillow between them.

Before he'd thought about it, Casper tilted his head up and pressed his lips to Cain's. Just quickly. They were warm. Dry and smooth, and mint tickled Casper's tongue as Cain gasped. His eyes were wide when Casper pulled back, a little tinge of panic as they darted over Casper's face. Sweeter was the flush of pink in his cheeks.

"Cas—" Cain's voice was strangled. "You—"

Which was totally a sensible reaction because Casper didn't know why the fuck he'd done that either. Casper swallowed hard, racking his brains.

"You…" Casper tapped his lips. "You remember, right?"

No reason to think he did, but … it was just _impossible_ that the kiss wouldn't etch indelible across Cain's thoughts, a stain amongst the slithering insubstantiality of the night. Just the way Casper could still close his eyes and feel the shower heat against his skin.

And slow, his features taut with hesitation, Cain gave a short nod. "I—" He coughed, his eyes flickering away. "I didn't know if—"

Casper drew himself closer, hand pressed against Cain's jaw. The hitch of Cain's breath knocked between their ribs like a promise, whispered in the soft of night. Mint danced across Casper's lips as he spoke again, his hoarse voice no more than a murmur. "That's so it's real."

Some choked sound burst from Cain's lips, something almost like a sob as his fingers dug into Casper's shoulder, pressing them closer still. Black-gold, Cain's eyes danced across Casper's face, a breathless daze that returned like a prayer to his lips. His lips. Always his lips, and a wrench drew through Casper's chest when the next gasp of that mint was so close the damp of Cain's breath warmed his tongue.

"Cas…" Such an ache in Cain's voice, wretched. "Cas, can I—"

 _No. No. No. Don't be a fucking twat, Roach. Just say—_ "Don't think I'm doing it again once we get up."

Cain's shaky nod put his forehead resting against Casper's, dry heat that had Casper's eyes fluttering closed. The leg that had been a promise in the way Cain's knee knocked his shins delivered it now, toes pressing between Casper's ankle and forcing a space for Cain to sink into the whole length of Casper's body, his thigh, lithe and muscular, pressing up between Casper's legs.

It drew a whimper out of him, some breathy fuck off moan that wrenched right out of the pulse of heat low down in his gut. It'd be nothing more. He _knew_ it'd be nothing more, not with Cain, but right now, it was fucking bliss.

Heaven in bitter not-pine and the mint drifting on Cain's breath as he whispered, "I suppose I'd better keep you in bed forever then, my love."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassie wasn't even gonna kiss him and then he just _did_ and Cain comes out with that cute ass line at the end smh
> 
> My friend told me that Cain's heart-eating line had her like 'wtf' 'cause he said it so casually - did I get the shock factor?


	38. Spoilt Brat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bonus chapter for all of you that doesn't quite fit the pacing with all that extra fluff I added before! Warning for my dreadful humour - read at your own risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS. Guys, sorry I missed Monday's update again. I'm rolling back to just Friday's so I can keep my updates moving at the same pace across my platforms!

“I’m _bored_.”

Cain glanced up from his paperwork, the hint of a smile on his lips. He’d gotten ink on his cheek, a splodge up by his hairline where he always tapped the tip of his pen while he chewed over something with his cheek resting on his closed fist. Cute. God, he hated it but everything about Cain was unbearably endearing. Even the indulgent turn to his smile as he set down his pen and leant back in his chair.

“Do you have anything to read?”

Casper leant back over the arm of the armchair Cain had put in here for him, a huge one set right in front of the fire that cradled him like a cloud. He arched his back and smirked at the way Cain traced the slice of skin that opened up between this too-small, too-short top and the _way_ too-tight jeans that were kind of crushing his balls. Cain had been eying him all day, especially when he bent over or spread his legs or arched like this. Good, because that was exactly why Casper had put this on.

The ghoul had strutted out the room with him in exactly the same clothes, and how it looked rolling around on the floor told Casper just how good he looked.

“I don’t feel like reading,” Casper said with exactly the degree of cute petulance that put that helpless smile on Cain’s face, the one he hid with the back of his hand because he must know how sappy it looked, but it didn’t matter because it shone in his eyes anyway.

Finding the range had been easy. Any ounce of cuteness got Cain googly eyed, but Casper had put a lot of effort into finding the sweet spot of spoilt behaviour to get his own way.

“Well...” Cain crooked his finger and his coffee cup floated through the air to him, its shadow bobbing against the mahogany wall in the slanting sunlight. “Do you want to watch something?”

Casper shrugged. “We watched everything I want to watch.”

“You’re just too indecisive to decide on all the other stuff and you well know it.”

Arrow to Casper’s heart there, but not the point at all. “I want to play a game. Can I use your laptop?”

The easiness stiffened a touch and Cain’s lips tightened as he tapped his nails against the surface of the desk. The sip of coffee was too long to be anything but deliberation.

“I’m not sure, Cas...”

Casper gave a huge sigh and slithered out of the chair to his feet. Cain didn’t take his eyes off the roll of his hips as he sashayed up to the desk. “Come _on_ , it’s not like I’m going to send out a distress signal.”

Cain sipped his coffee and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Cas—”

“ _Please._ You can turn the internet off when I’ve downloaded it. I _know_ you don’t use it and I have no clue where you keep the router.”

Still hesitating. And he didn’t even know the things Casper could do with a computer. Once without the internet would turn _so easily_ into unsupervised use, and he’d found the router weeks ago.

Cain was a pushover. It was adorable really, and it made Casper feel that spoilt kind of indulged that made wiggling his hips and dressing pretty and batting his eyes feel all fuzzy and warm. The kind of nice that got him horny without feeling dirty.

It took sitting himself in Cain’s lap, stealing his coffee from his hand, and drinking it slouched against his shoulder with his legs hooked either side of Cain’s all nice and wide for Cain to give in.

“ _Fine_ , you little brat. But you can piss off if you think I’m giving you the password.”

Casper grinned and pressed a kiss damp with coffee to Cain’s jaw. His strong arms snared Casper around the waist and pulled him in tight, up into Cain’s lips pressed against the crook of his neck. His breath as he nuzzled into Casper’s throat was warm with the heat of the fire.

No part of Casper had to fake the way that made him giggle and squirm. The only bit he had to push down was how badly he wanted to twist around and kiss Cain properly.

Maybe soon. This mug had signed his death warrant letting Casper into that. Emails. Documents. Passwords. _Secrets._ All of it right at his fingertips. There had to be something to help him out of this place and he’d fucking well find it. Just one _sliver_ on some mundane fallibility of sorcery and he’d have his freedom.

If not, there wasn’t anything Casper couldn’t find on the web if he looked hard enough and deep enough.

And if it was really a dead end, at least he could play Dark Souls and cause some chaos _somewhere._

_~ * ~ * ~_

Cain Smith. Thirty-one years of age raised an orphan in some dingy corner of England. Dropped out of schooling at sixteen and took a plunge into the world of shady business dealings. Seven years later, the devil surfaced running middleman for gun deals between huge American manufacturers and generals in the China-Russia ‘lukewarm’ war. Both sides, and he ran it for so long as the war kept him richer than weaselling his own company into position as the primary supplier to every participant. No skill with gunsmithing, just impeccable connections and great wholesale deals. All the companies he’d worked for had sold to him at rock-bottom prices before he turned twenty-eight.

Three years later, now, the business had exploded into pharmaceuticals and domestic gun sales, and had a huge share in a new company making bounds of innovation in space exploration. There was even a nice little video of Cain and some other CEO chatting to an interviewer about their vision for humanity’s future in space. Casper had watched it three times, mesmerised by the glowing passion in Cain’s face.

Of course it wouldn’t be Cain if it was all so pristine. Rumours were rife about his connections to South American cartels, drug trafficking, and numerous high-profile deaths that furthered his business development. The continued unrest in the Middle East and in the Mongolian deadzone were a plague across his good name.

Cain didn’t answer to any of these, and his total silence other than that single video kept him just short of becoming a Fawkes-like scapegoat for the slow collapse of society. No social media, no records, no paparazzi run-ins – just one big fuck all. Business accounts pristine according to the sources Casper had prodded for information with bitcoin bought out of Cain’s account, and every email was exemplar in its professionalism, even if loads of it was evil villain shit straight out of a movie.

He had to be the only guy in the fucking universe who actually kept his entire life analog. Fucking paper and parchment. Absolute prick.

Casper fucking loved it.

Didn’t help him though. Not one jot.

But hey, Nutjob hadn’t noticed that Casper had changed his email signature. Some Arabic general emailing Cain today was trying as subtly as he could to point out the change. Casper was still snickering at the latest email when Cain swanned into the study, coat still on and a briefcase dangling from his fingers.

Casper’s heart stuttered at the sight of him. The big leather seat creaked as Casper sunk into it and gave Cain _eyes_ over the top of the laptop screen. Necessary eyes by that glower.

Now that he’d exhausted everything the laptop could do for him, this would probably work in his favour. After all, he _hadn’t_ sent out a distress beacon or anything like that. Hadn’t logged into his Instagram, nothing, not even an email. He didn’t have anyone he gave a fuck about telling he was alright. Not even Jack.

“Don’t you bloody look at me like that.”

Casper batted his eyelashes. “Like what?”

“Like I _ever_ agreed to let you use that, let alone told you the password.”

The pin had been a date circled yearly in the diaries languishing in Cain’s drawer – one coming up soon, in fact – like that had been hard to guess. Dickhead needed a harder one if he didn’t want Casper in there.

Sighing, Cain shrugged his coat off and threw it over the armchair. “Well then.” The thick carpet muffled the tap of his shoes as he circled to Casper and leant his elbow on the back of the chair. The air around him tickled Casper’s nose with pine. “What have you been doing?”

Casper tilted the screen of the laptop back, baring the thread with the Arabic general as Cain leant in. “Snooping.”

“Is that—” Cain groaned, rubbing his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Cas. You’re an absolute little devil, you know that. How much have you read?”

“Well, you’ve been _really_ busy this week and I’ve been _really_ bored...”

“ _All_ of it?” Cain caught Casper’s smirk and some half-groan half-laugh sound burst from his lips. The chair rocked and muttered its complaints as Cain dropped onto the arm, his arm slipping down around Casper’s shoulders. “You bloody devil...” The chuckles trailed off. “Cas... Have you—“

A short hiss pushed between Cain’s teeth and he tipped his head back. Slanting afternoon sun cast his features to sublime golden relief, the creamy perfection of marbled martyrs beneath the vatican sun.

Casper cut in before the cogs in Nutjob’s brain could clock onto Roach Boy getting ideas above his place as captee.

“I haven’t.” Cain’s shoulder lay taut beneath Casper’s head. Hard, but the softness remained a promise in its familiar shape. The tight line in his jaw that clenched deeper still as Casper held his eyes. “I thought about it, but...” Casper toyed with his shirtsleeves, eyes flickering away, “I don’t have anyone but you, Cain. There’s no one else I want. Not even Jack.”

So beautiful, the way that softness came back, in the loose wonder of his smile and the shine in his eyes. His arm squeezed, crowding Casper’s shoulders against him, and he pressed a chilly kiss to the top of Casper’s head. Dickhead fell for it every time, and Casper hardly had to lie.

“Nothing else then? Just _snooping?_ ”

Casper tapped his feet in the air where they sat up on Cain’s desk. Cain hated that. He’d grumbled at Casper everytime he caught him with his feet kicked up for the first few weeks, but now he never did anything but sit beside them and run his thumbs over the tight muscles while Casper read. Foot massages had never turned him on so much. Not that he’d ever had one from anyone but clients.

A sick feeling ran through his gut. Casper pulled his feet back under him, crossed in a lotus, and rubbed his face against Cain’s shirt. Always smelt so damn nice, but Casper had forgotten to shower again today, and he could kind of smell the musty scent of himself. But Cain never seemed to mind.

“Well?” Cain scratched his fingers against Casper’s scalp and he just about purred, butting his head up into Cain’s touch like goddamn _Roach Cat_. “Are you _honestly_ expecting me to believe you didn’t do anything but read my emails?”

“Uh, I know you went to Wells Grammar School but dropped out before college and have a weirdly good relationship with the head of the Columbian cartel. Then there’s that that whole fuelling the Middle Eastern war to sell your guns thing, and you’re getting my profits from essential medication rant later and you’re _not_ going to like it one bit, Pharma Bro Shkreli. Plus—” Casper winked, poking his tongue between his teeth, at Cain and got some pinched-nose glowering back— “you look cute as fuck when you talk about space.”

“Brilliant.” Casper giggled at Cain’s stubborn monotone and nestled deeper into his side. “Is that _all_ then, brat?”

Casper rapped his nails against the laptop and glanced down at the ghoul curled up by the chair. It winked. “Uh... I changed your email signature too.”

“My what?”

Grinning, Casper popped up the signature dialog box. Cain leant in to read, tugging Casper forward with him.

 _Corporate Child – Certified Wizard Daddy_ , it read, in bold pink text, and underneath, smaller in grey italics, displayed in two neat columns, Casper had written:

_Daily Corporate Child Facts_

_Private yacht count (excluding any lost to sea storms, sunk to hide bodies, and the ~~five~~ six gifted to my favourite rent boy): _Nine (updated bi-weekly)

 _Today’s breakfast:_ Flesh of the poor taken with a garnish of the eggs of a near-extinct fish

 _Bill of the day:_ Seeking to legalise the illegal dumping of toxic waste on coral reefs

 _Today’s private plane to work song:_ Toxic by Britney Spears

 _Net wealth:_ About $2 billion more than yours, scum

 _Beauty tip:_ I really can’t emphasise enough how good the blood of virgins is for your skin. All you fools miss the zero off the end of my age.

Needless to say, Cain had a good few long blinks at it. “You—Are you telling me I’ve been signing all my emails today with _this_?”

 _Oo-ooh._ Was he angry? Hard to tell. That voice came through a fresh, blank canvas stretched stiff across the frame of his tongue. Casper tipped his head back. Cain was completely impassive except for that twitch around his brows and the tightness in his mouth.

“Not _just_ today. For the past four days. I updated it every day too.”

“Oh for bloody fuck’s—” Cain’s words broke in a hiss and his fingers went like iron to a magnet up to the bridge of his nose.

Maybe he _was_ angry. Why should Casper care if he was angry? It was _hilarious,_ and a drip of the vengeance he deserved. The laptop snapped shut, and Casper and the ghoul both looked up at Cain with puppy-dog eyes and a pout.

A huff broke Cain’s lips, then another. He cracked one of his eyes, a flash of dancing brown, and his lips trembled for one tenuous moment before he burst into laughter. Bright, loud, genuine gales of laughter with his head thrown back, hand clutched to his gut like it might subdue the hilarity. The sturdy chair rattled under Casper’s ass and Cain clung onto the back to keep himself up. It was infectious. Just a few seconds before Casper started laughing too, hand pressed to his mouth against the swell of fluttering butterflies that swarmed through his stomach seeking their final rebirth up his throat.

God, he was a fucking psycho nutcase, but right now, he was Casper’s psycho nutcase.

The giggles died on his lips. _What fucking shit’s going ‘round your head, Roach?_ No time to think on it. Cain gasped down the laughter and his eyes flew open. Settled right on Casper with enough intensity to take his breath away.

“You little bloody...” Cain’s words died in a soft exhale, the gentle aftershocks of that hilarity. Then a growl, made low in his throat like a flame-kissed hand plunging into Casper’s pants. “Come here.”

The sound was like sex, and even as the words left Cain’s mouth, his arms snarled around Casper’s chest, and Cain claimed his lips with a kiss.

Somewhere distant, the laptop clattered to the floor, but that didn’t mean or matter for shit. Cain’s kiss battered his mind like the blizzard trapped under his skin, and it raged through his body under this touch of ice so passionate it burned red hot. Cain hauled him up and Casper wound his legs around his waist, hands twisted in that silken hair. One of Cain’s hands grasped Casper’s thigh, fingers clamped down so tight they bruised and the other cradled the back of his head crushing him into the kiss.

Casper couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t get deep enough. He tipped his head back and opened his mouth and moaned around the shuddering pleasure of Cain’s tongue sliding against his own. It was all teeth and nails in their skin and aching, desperate need. Casper’s mind rolled back and it nearly slipped away. Nothing but a haze of black-red-scalding _want_.

Cain broke, gasping for breath. The jolt as he dropped into the chair went through Casper’s spine, forcing a burst of laughter from his lips. His feet locked behind Cain’s back crushed against the leather, and Cain’s panting breath was winter caressing Casper’s throat.

“God, Cas, I love you so bloody much.” Those gasped, ragged words punched an ache in him deeper than anything that kiss managed. All the way through every inch of him, hot and steamy and fiercely intense. Casper froze as Cain pressed a kiss against his throat, drenched with the slick testament of that mind-blowing kiss. “So much, Cas.” The words were dangerously close to a moan, breathed in his ear while Cain’s forehead pressing against his temple. “God, I’m sorry. I couldn’t not kiss you. I love you. I love you so, so much.”

Loved him.

Air didn’t seem to be doing much right now, like when you hid beneath the covers and that same stale air kept turning round and round in your lungs until you’d drawn all the oxygen out of the thin, muggy space. Casper’s head spun, and the dust drifted through the slow air like snow danced in the spaces in between, and in their soft quiet, the only sounds were the soft laughter in Cain’s breath and Casper’s thumping heart.

_He really does love me._

A little whimper burst up Casper’s throat. Cain drew back, and in that breath of a space, Casper nosed himself under Cain’s chin. His limbs quivered. Was that the blood still pooling around his groin? But this trembling came like the brush of feathers, soft. A flutter of wings within his chest.

Because psycho nut delusion or no, the hypnotisation of insanity or no, within these walls there was no real madness and Cain’s crazy existed solely to love him.

And it was the best he was ever fucking going to get, and right then with Cain’s arms around him and his fingers scratching behind Casper’s ear just the way he liked – right then, with those soft hushes and the weight of comfort slung around his shoulders, none of that madness mattered. Even imprisoned, he felt freer than he’d ever dreamed.

Cain loved him, and it … kind of made everything feel okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was such a bad joke don't look at me omg (also i totally had an image for that but it misbehaved) - at least they kissed (again)!


	39. Vulture Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're back on track to the main story and Casper's somewhere familiar - alone outside in the dark and the rain. What could've gone wrong? And what's got Cain so unsettled?

The shattering of Casper's little delusional paradise came so _stupidly_. Bloody stupid, Cain'd say, but fuck thinking about him right now.

Fuck thinking about him, like Casper could actually stop. Like he wasn't a cancer in Casper's fucking brain, eating away at neurons and matter until all that was left was a primordial gloop of mushy obsession.

That's all there had been for days, and like the biggest idiot on the planet, he'd indulged in it. No more kisses, but those touches came so free now, and the smiles...

Casper's breath choked up in his chest, heavy and wet as the rain-drenched earth. The trees above his head spat cold water on him, and the soil had soaked through his socks and squished between his toes.

Didn't matter though. Only thing that mattered was that his chest had no fucking right aching like this. Like someone had jammed a fucking crowbar between his ribs and each jerk of it gored through the flesh behind them as it snapped the bones one by one.

No right at all.

Not for Cain.

But how could it not when it made that smile not Casper's smile anymore. Like it ever had been. Made him the fucking idiot forgetting the delusion in the first place, forgetting that he wasn't Casper, never had been fucking Casper, had always been just another one of those lost boys.

The image still stained his mind. Fresh glut of rot smeared over his brain and his bones and his heart.

Cain, stood by that cabinet in his study, and Casper had slipped in the open door, silent, slow, a fuzzy little thrill under his tongue imagining the way Cain would growl and sweep him off his feet when Casper startled him. There'd been a picture in Cain's hand, worn around the edges and a hint of blazoned colour glossy across the front, and in the other, a glass of whiskey raised to his lips.

Tears had pricked Cain's eyes, little diamonds drinking up the dazzling day.

And Casper's chest just dropped out, hadn't stopped dropping out. Like in those cartoons where the trapdoor opens and the heroes all run with their feet as wheels in the air, a mad scramble for safety before in a big clang of noise, they go screaming, falling, plummeting into the black abyss below.

Didn't have to see that picture to know who it'd be. _Lost boy #1? Maybe #4, or could it be lucky #10 who'd really fucked him up?_ Twin darknesses swamped him and only one of them was halfway not fucking delusional.

That's what that cabinet had always been. It'd be Casper's final resting place too when Cain got bored or Casper violated some sanctified trait of the crazy and marked himself _Lost Cause #11_. Probably fucking teeth in there. Hair. Skulls. _Skin_.

Then the next thought overwhelmed him. The first had been a beast, but there was always a bigger monster, and this one swallowed the first in a maw so gargantuan it made little more sustenance than a single plankton to a whale.

_Stupid fucking Roach, crazy never loved you. Crazy always loved the hallucination where your face should be._

He'd run. Cain had shouted after him, but so soon it'd drowned in the screaming in his skull and the pounding blood through his brain. _Run, Roach Boy, run. Far away from your psycho nutjob as his prison allows. Run and maybe you can pretend you're free. You've never in your miserable fucking life been free._

Down amongst the muck and the rotting leaves and this bit of the garden he hated because it stunk of failed dreams: a gazebo half-raised and too many fallen trees.

Cain wouldn't look for him here.

Until of course he did.

Casper didn't hear him come, too caught up in the pantomime theatrics of almost but not quite, never quite, couldn't quite fucking cry. Shuddering shoulders, the weight that crushed the sockets around his eyes to throbbing shards, his breath so choked up he couldn't breathe. _Because Cain didn't really_ —

"Cassie, love?"

Casper moaned into the hands pressed over his mouth, curling deeper into his shuddering ball of deluded regret. Branches crunched behind him, the rustle of leaves unfurling with spring. Should be warmer, but all of him felt so, so fucking cold he couldn't take it. Couldn't breathe. A hand clutching his throat to the size of a straw.

"Oh, Cas..." A hand settled on his shoulder. Trembling. What fucking right did this guy have to fucking tremble? Casper's gorge surged up his throat and with a wordless hiss, he threw the hand off. Some wet, pathetic sound from Cain. "Cas? What is it, love? I—God, what are you doing out here? I couldn't find you."

Like that hadn't been the fucking idea. The sorrow weighing on his velvet voice ground against all this pathetic wet in his chest. It'd been guarded, once. Locked behind an iron wall against the world, but this misery and these weeks of soft, sweet care had left that wall in pieces.

 _Stupid_.

It was Cain's fault. This was all his fucking fault, kidnapping him and imprisoning him and being so stupid fucking sweet and lovely and making Casper forget everything grim and gritty and miserable in his fucking life. Forgetting that he was nothing but rot and foulness bubbling beneath a veil of leather that no one could ever possibly love the second they went more than skin deep.

And Cain only could because he'd never even prodded the skin to feel the way it rolled like a bag of boneless slime beneath the touch. Cain stared at the hallucination with smitten eyes and cradled it in feather-soft hands until the pane of prettily stained glass slipped and shattered to bare the ghoul beneath.

"I hate you," Casper whispered to the black stain of night. "I've always fucking hated you."

Some choked sound trapped in Cain's throat and a backward step sounded in the wet squelch of rotting leaves. "I know."

Good. Let him never fucking forget it. Let it haunt him until Casper finally fucking died. "Leave me alone."

"No. I—I'd like you to come inside, Cas. It's ... It's cold out here. Come get warm."

Nausea swarmed around Casper's gut. The peach-stained boy of yesterday screamed in his mind, battering his skull against the wall of reality while wasting with his need to return to the bliss-dream.

Casper's voice cracked through the night the same as those petrified branches snapping underfoot. "Fuck off."

"Cas, _please_. You must be freezing, please."

Maybe Casper hated this place because it mirrored everything inside him. Dead, half-finished. Stuffed full of rotten, hopeless dreams. Cold water squirmed between his toes and slithered beneath his collar and he shuddered with it. The stink of organic decay wormed up his nostrils, choking him on the promise of death.

"I don't deserve to be warm."

That stupid fucking sound again. Heartbreak embodied on a whimper. It strained at the end, different to usual like some other frustration lay beneath Cain's pretence of care. The sodden earth slurped at his shoes as he circled around in front of Casper, the polished shine of them all soaked and ruined with mud. Like he cared. Like he'd fucking run out here, and his voice all fucking raw like he'd cried when he couldn't find Casper. He couldn't care. He just fucking couldn't really care.

"Please come inside, Cassie. I—I don't like you all the way out here. Something—There's something strange tonight and when I couldn't find you, I thought—" Cain's breath choked up in his chest, and Casper's eyes crept up to his face, right in time with the dark shiver lingering through his spine. Something fevered haunted Cain's features. Something scared.

Cain hiccupped when Casper met his eyes. "I just want you to be inside the house, love, then I'll let you be. Please."

"You're scared." The truth came on the way Cain flinched from the words, his outstretched, mud-stained hand closing to a fist. The shudder deepened, racking through Casper's bones. It wasn't because Casper might leave, not with these wards, and it wasn't because Casper might kill himself again because he could do that just as well inside. He was scared of something else.

Cain. Power. Master Sorcerer. Devourer of hearts.

 _Scared_.

A dark clutch grabbed Casper's chest, and he fell on his ass in the mud. Something tight and high wound through his voice, straining it to a cigarette-stained grate. "Why are you scared? What the fuck is going on?"

Cain's features opened, brightened with that drizzling sunshine way all full of concern for Casper – forget the terror: Lost Boy #11 looked scared down in the mud.

It was so, so painfully, beautifully, shittily obvious that Cain forgot it all just because now Casper trembled the way Cain had been when he found Casper hiding out here. Before Casper could squirm away, Cain was there, down on his knees between Casper's legs and sweeping him up into his arms, out of the mud onto his feet.

Cain's fingers made damp pinpoints against Casper's neck and the bare skin at his waist, cold as the drops of water plummeting from the trees. Cain shook, but it wasn't the cold, never was the cold, and Casper fought down the sickness as he buried his face in Cain's chest against the damp of his shirt and the marble skin beneath. He smelt like the forest in the rain, but not this shitty part. Alpine forests atop mountains, gasping free in the unpolluted air as chill rain tumbled between their branches to feed the vibrant undergrowth beneath.

So fucking stupid how just being in his arms made Casper feel safe.

"It's alright, love." That crooning voice all stained wet at the edges, fingers smoothing Casper's sodden hair to his head. "There's nothing, love. I think it's just me. I think I just scared myself, you know? I love you so much, Cassie, I couldn't—" A gasp, and there was the choke of tears. "I couldn't go on if something happened to you again, not this time."

Casper sobbed into Cain's throat, the drips of rain off his hair mimicking the tears he could never cry, and Cain hushed him, soft shapes of words against his cheek. What did it mean? Why did he keep speaking like that? _Why_? Why couldn't it just be Casper that he spoke to, not whichever unflawed gem he saw slicked across Casper's face?

"It's alright," Cain murmured. "It's alright, love. Let me take you inside, Cassie. You're so, so cold."

And Casper could only nod, cling to Cain as he turned around so Casper could jump onto his back. Because he wanted this. As they trailed out of the rotting copse, he wanted the bruising grip Cain kept on his thighs to be for him. He wanted the smile as he rubbed his nose against Cain's throat to bloom with only his scarred, ugly face in Cain's mind.

All that sweetness he'd dreamed was for him alone – sugared cupcakes set out pretty for the cockroach to devour – he just wanted it to be real. Why couldn't someone love him like that? Why couldn't he live in a paradise with those rolling hills on the horizon and pretty stars unobscured by murky light?

Because he didn't deserve it. Because nothing but poison lay beneath his skin.

Black bloomed across the sky. Black darker than the gathering night. Black like the void between worlds splashed abyssal across the clouds.

Cain swore, and tension jerked through every inch of him as he twisted. His hands clenched Casper's legs so tight Casper might have cried out if his whole body hadn't seized in a moment of white panic. Darkness writhed about them both as Cain shook, ice gathering across his skin and Casper's breath, rasping up his throat, plumed white in the air.

Then in a burst of hysterical laughter, the darkness fled. "A vulture. Bloody _cunting_ vulture, idiot _fucking_ thing." But his body didn't feel like it'd been a vulture, not with this tension still thrumming through his limbs. And like ... Casper was about ninety-eight percent sure there were no vultures around here anyway.

The stark reminder of the magnitude of sorcery – fucking magic sprawled across the sky and Cain gathering the fucking night like that was _normal_ – it all made his stomach twist and his head spin and good fucking thing he wasn't standing or he'd probably fall over. Smack, face right in the mud.

Cain shivered and hiked Casper higher on his back. "Fuck this."

Sounded like the kind of high, tight way Jack would say the same thing seeing sorcery like that, that kind of bravado – not really wanting to admit he's scared, but terrified enough to fuck right off out of the situation. Hearing it from Cain...

Well, Casper kinda wanted some reins so he could snap them and get this piggy-back ride sprinting back inside the manor. But Cain went quick enough himself. The back door slammed behind them and he stopped for a moment to trace something over the wood with his finger. The cold air scared them up the hall at a more sedate pace that calmed Casper's nerves.

Inside. Safe. His damp clothes stuck to his skin and in the warmth, his shivering changed source to motherfucking _freezing_. Marble statue boy carrying him through the halls didn't help a fucking damn, but Casper clung to him anyway. The longer he clung, the more tension seemed to seep from Cain's limbs until, when he shouldered open the bedroom door, he felt all easy and lax and like normal again.

Right up until Cain actually put him down and turned to face him. Water drizzled from the tips of Cain's hair, strands plastered like seaweed across his forehead and it stuck together as Cain pushed it back over his head. Cain breathed heavily, the only audible thing past the hum of the heating, Casper's chattering teeth, and the eternal hammering of the rain. The rise and fall of his chest pushed against the translucent veil of his shirt.

Kept dripping though, from the shirt stuck to his skin and the mud-logged knees and cuffs of his trousers and ruined shoes. A drizzle gathered beneath Cain on the polished wood, the soft lamplight casting it a puddle of liquid amber, and a wet splatter shook off Casper as he stood there, shivering like some ragged drowned rat.

It was so fucking cold. A cold like your bones turned to iron and the marrow at the core to ice. It seeped through his muscles in gut-jarring shudders. Casper clutched himself, the sagging fabric of his t-shirt gathering in folds against his skin as he hunched up. Felt like he'd never be fucking warm again. Like whatever ice ran through Cain's veins had poisoned his soul.

But that just made it the literal manifestation of the metaphorical, right? Real poison in his veins, not just the thoughts of Cain in his mind. Even now, Cain had on that stupid fucking smile all sweet and slow and hesitant like there was anything behind it but delusion.

Cain shifted, a sort of bashfulness in the way he made the shape of himself smaller, fingers still threaded through his soaked hair and with the other hand, he toyed with the open collar of his shirt. That look was different in Cain. In Cain, that look read comfortable enough to not project dominance on the space, and it came with his chin still lifted, a slow tilt of his head as the smile grew and his eyes traced adoring over the hallucination in front of Casper's face.

Casper's stomach turned, a feverish heat mingling with the unrelenting cold in the pit of his gut and sliding up the back of his neck. It wasn't okay. It just wasn't okay.

Something built in his lungs and if he had to look at Cain a second longer, he'd scream.

The ice shattered and Casper bolted from the room. Cain's shout of frustration chased him down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassie's sure as hell in a bad place right now, and Cain is definitely scared. But of what? Not that vulture by the looks of it.
> 
> How many of you think Cain really is seeing Casper for who he really is?
> 
> P.S. This is a public service announcement to anyone who happens to be on Tapas as well. It's inksgiving season and I'm releasing some special content for Stains as I hit ink goals. So check it out if you're interested! First short story will be released by Monday! https://tapas/io/series/stainsbeneathourskin


	40. Magical University AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚐𝚢  
> ➳ Cain Smith is a professor at the country's only magical university, and he's never cared about anything besides growing his own knowledge and power. People are nothing more than entertainment, and when senior student Casper Black shows delight in the lure of obscene power, Cain is captivated by the chance at a new game.
> 
> Except Casper has teeth of needles and before things are done, he will hold Cain by his throat. Sometimes the search for power can eat you alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is an AU written for a collaboration on Tapas. It's set in the universe of KM Langley's "Do you believe in magic?". Shoot me a comment if there's any worldbuilding that doesn't make sense, but also rest assured it's not entirely essential to this little plot. Just a note that despite Cain consistently referring to him as 'the boy', Casper is 22 and a university senior.
> 
> It's 9k words and replacing your usual Friday update - Enjoy!

.•─────⋅☾ _**Misplaced Energy**_ ☽⋅─────•

.

There was something to be learnt about a person by the way they reacted to corruption.

Firstly, whether the forbidden put delight gathered behind their teeth, and glued their eyes to the glistening apple cupped in Eve's hands. And then, that inevitable way it changed. The dawning disgust as that first mouthful of the fruit left nothing but rot on their tongues, and they found the apple was no more than glossy red skin cast over a putrid nest of worms and decay.

Cain had always had more respect for those that were repulsed from the first. Those that knew their goodness and their justice and committed to it, rather than the multitude of weak sinners who flirted with the pretty parts of evil. Magic flaunted its innocence and wonder, but true power – sought power, not that gifted on a golden platter – came with sickness. It came with watching energy crawl through your veins like worms and heaving the melting insides of your guts onto cold stone floor.

It came with this damnable headache grinding into his temple as he tried to remember his subject.

Letting his eyes trail over the mooning faces clustered behind their desks, Cain had to fight back a sneer. Every expression in the room that had once held dazzled eyes jerked into dull repulsion while the last words of his lecture hung like grave tolls in the air.

 _Almost_ every face.

Those whose rapture only grew when they gazed upon the rotten insides of power were something … special. More, when it happened not once but again and again and again. Cain had developed an almost obsessive fixation into working these casual turns from theory to temptation to obscenity into his lectures just so that when his withering scan of the room ended in the far, back corner, he could witness a little glimpse of _hunger._

Stupid, given how close he walked to the bone in this place, but he simply … couldn’t resist.

The boy had caught Cain's eye the moment he stalked into the room, jamming his shoulder into the arm of another student half a foot taller than him and delivering a scowl so vicious that Cain had to laugh at the way the other _wilted._ And that wasn't even counting for the delicious flare of darkly toxic green in the air around him nor those raised scars knifing through his cheek.

 _One, two, three._ The number of times that first lecture that Cain had found himself staring at the boy with some strange, dark fascination stirring at the bottom of his lungs.

 _Really_ not his type, not that he'd ever found himself something so banal as a type or any kind of interest in another human being beside how they could be _used_ , but if he did have a type, it certainly wouldn't be scowling university students probably eight years younger than him dressed in _that_ much scruffy black.

Only those scars promised something more – a hint of slick violence – and _oh,_ it hadn't disappointed.

Casper Black was subtly entranced with the forbidden, but when Cain bared its vile underbody, his scan of the room inevitably, inimically, _delightfully_ ended on gluttony.

Cain wanted it, and what he wanted, he would have. Excess and uncontrolled desire ended only one way – the path of Icarus in his hubris skimming too close to the searing mass of the sun – and Cain could taste it on his tongue like that rotting apple that when this boy fell, he would fall like ecstasy in a catastrophic explosion of total annihilation.

And if there was one thing Cain knew how to wield, it was catastrophe.

.

•─────⋅☾ ⋅ ☽⋅─────•

.

The knock on his office door came late. Not while the chattering voices of students on the paths below nailed into his skull, but in the hours of creeping darkness when only the soft amber updraft of streetlights crept through his office window, and Cain worked by the light splashing across the desk from the lamp.

His eyes ached from squinting at miniscule text, because _god_ only knew why but whichever imbecile who'd written this dusty old cipher had decided that not only did Cain have to decipher the most convoluted Old English he'd ever encountered to work out what the bloody hell the prat was saying about _Resisteing Magickal Corruption Moste Fierce_ , he also had to put his nose to the bloody page to read a single damn word.

Honestly, if the fool author had still been alive, Cain would've first, torn his mind apart for whatever cryptic knowledge he'd hidden in this waffle, and second, jammed his hand down the twat’s throat to rip out his lungs.

As it went, all he could do was hurl the bloody thing out the window and hope it cracked someone's skull open, but the knock on the door saved him the chagrin of facing his own temper in broken glass and the long trip outside to retrieve it.

Cain slammed the book shut and leant back into the old leather chair, wincing at its creaking bones as he rubbed the tension out of the bridge of his nose. _Count to ten, Cain. Does you no good getting another warning for turning one of these little twats into a slug._ Whoever decided seeking your own knowledge and power came with the obligation of palming it off students who couldn't give a crap about the finer differences between flavours of Universal Energy also deserved feeling Cain's hand down their throat clawing out their lungs.

 _One day._ One fucking day he'd be better than this.

One last calming breath and Cain lowered his hands, elbows on the firm wooden arms of his chair and his head resting on the tips of his fingers.

He flicked his finger, and a burst of air within the door latch forced it free. Another gust full of blackened air pulled it swinging inward.

Casper Black stood in the doorway, and as he took in Cain still idle in his chair, a grin made of sharp edges bloomed across his full lips. A strange stir of anticipation went through Cain's gut seeing him there, no matter that he'd been expecting – no, _goading_ this visit for weeks. The way the boy skulked inside when Cain crooked his fingers felt like some form of _advent._ A beginning, if not of something brilliant then at least of a new game.

Casper's features, lit by the corridor, slid into shadow as he crept into the darkness like he plunged into black water.

Cain guided the door shut on another breeze, and he made sure the boy heard the lock _click_.

"Welcome." Cain tipped two fingers at the chair opposite. "Do sit."

The showing of teeth didn't fade as Casper eased himself into the hard, upright chair opposite, and Cain took a moment to trace his features for anything hidden behind the ghoulish turn. The desk lamp glinted off Casper’s teeth, and the brightness only highlighted the dark pit where two were missing on the left side.

How had he lost them? It presented Cain a new possibility to turn over in his mind, placing the scars aside for bruised lips and thick clots of blood oozing over his chin while he laughed.

Casper's voice put it all out of mind. Deep, hoarse, the way it _cracked_ around each word. How could one boy be built of so many promises of violence and dark secrets?

"Are you gonna stare at me all evening, or are you gonna ask why I'm here?"

Interesting. Most students developed a stutter around Cain, and if they didn't have one at the beginning, they came in with foolhardy self-elevation and gained one by the end. He let a smirk curl one corner of his mouth.

"I wasn't aware I indicated that I was interested. I'm hardly going to exert myself to discover _your_ problems."

"It's not a problem _._ " Casper shifted in his seat, and seemed to sit a bit higher once he settled. "I guess it's an academic question."

Cain debated slipping into the boy's mind to see if he could dredge up what he was thinking, but he'd discovered a long time ago that it made things boring rather quickly. That glint in Casper’s dark eyes and the late hour told Cain all he needed to know.

"Confused about Daud's Law of Misplaced Energy?"

Instead of bristling at the slow, mocking tone Cain adopted, a false innocence widened Casper's eyes. It went pleasingly with the rasping sarcasm in his voice. Especially when the praise that rung so true to the way the boy spent the lectures hanging to Cain's every word. "Oh, I'm not sure how anyone could be, Professor. Not with how well _you_ teach it. My old Physical lecturer never really liked talking about leeching from unwilling mages."

Cain clucked his tongue against his teeth, shaking his head even as he let his smile widen. "I can't imagine she did. After all, I only teach it because you're all such _high-level_ mages that someone ought to warn you about the risks of long-term mutation. I shouldn't want such impressionable young people suffering so for such an unreliable ideal."

“It’s interesting though, right? You can expand your own potential ‘til you’re a god, theoretically, but when you start bringing energy from outside in – suddenly all this stuff starts going fucked up. How come magic revolts so badly when it's not yours? There’s no evidence of us leaving differentiable imprints on our energy, so why is it different when we start to game the system?”

Delightful. So, the boy wasn't just enamoured by corruption, his taste lay in _power._ Cogs ticked behind that scarred face, lips twitching around thoughts, and Cain waited, a single finger tapping against his cheek.

"You know, the funny thing about burning out and cell mutation, Professor…" No matter the coy innocence, Casper’s eyes _cut_. The intent was cradled in every shadowed hollow of his face, and the serpentine way he tilted his head. "The funny thing is, it's almost like magic's way of keeping us all in line. When you look at Daud's Law of Misplaced Energy without accelerated burnout then—"

"Why, Casper, it almost sounds as if you've forgotten when I cautioned you all so thoroughly against excessive use of Augmentation."

Now a bite came into Casper's smile. "It's a little hard to remember, Professor"—Casper's tongue curled around that word like an oath to sin—"seeing as it was such a footnote to your discussion of relating mutational torque to the law of perpetual motion."

"I should have thought the image alone would have been enough to warn you off."

Casper shrugged. Slouching forward, he toyed with a pen on the edge of Cain's desk. His fingers moved dextrously, but under the light, his knuckles were scabbed and bruised, the skin around his nails dry, ragged. Cain itched to snare his hand, press his thumb into the bruises and watch him wince. Dig into the knuckle and with his fingers curled around Casper’s, pull it back until it snapped. Cain's teeth ached as he ground them shut.

Not yet.

"Probably worked for the rest of them." Casper glanced up at Cain under his eyelashes. They were long and dark and sheltered his eyes like a thicket of thorns. "I bet the Dean doesn't like us hearing about it. Wouldn't like to know what he'd do if he knew one of the professors was lecturing in it, no matter if he's _cautioning_ us."

Ah, blackmail. Predictable but not unsatisfying, especially as that one really _would_ get Cain in trouble. Cain broadened his grin, showing a flash of teeth, and a flare of thrill lifted in his stomach as Casper's fingers froze, his eyes narrowing. "Oh no, I can't imagine he'd be pleased at all."

In fact, he’d be _ecstatic._

The boy dropped the pen and sat back, hands dipping out of sight beneath the desk. His face had gone still, and it only deepened this static heat in Cain's gut. So _quick_ to catch on. And he must know that Cain was only waiting to hear him say the words.

He did, of course. Every word that came out of Casper's mouth, Cain had spent the last few months planting there. It left a pleasant tingling down the back of his neck and beneath his tongue to see the boy respond so eagerly to the glossy red apple Cain had dangled before his face.

"If foreign magic never burnt you out," Casper said slowly, something dark simmering beneath his tone, "you get the loophole in Daud's Law. The loophole in _nature._ An eternal feedback loop of burgeoning energy. And—"

The boy bared his teeth, hands closing around the edge of the desk, and with the way the shifting light cast a drizzling chiaroscuro of shadows over his face, that pit where his teeth had been could almost be oozing black blood. Casper's eyes burned, so fierce that Cain had to dig his fingers into his skull to stop himself grabbing the boy by his hair and slamming his face into the desk. Just to teach him his place.

" _You_ ," Casper rasped, "know how to do it. Teach me."

Oh well, the boy would learn. If not, Cain's more experimental research was easily disguised as _safe_.

The ancient mechanisms in Cain's chair groaned as he rocked back, mingling with his dramatic sigh. "Well, I suppose I've no choice in the matter. I do hope you don't have a weak stomach…"

Casper snorted, a sound that cut off in a sharp draw of breath as Cain jolted forward in his chair. A violent motion. He planted his elbows on the desk and cradled his chin in his hands.

Wide-eyed, Casper's hand sunk from where it'd flown to his throat. Now the smug triumph vanished from his face. Almost a shame, had it been put there by anything but some misguided notion of staking a victory against _Cain._ He grinned. Casper swallowed hard as his eyes traced the shark bite of Cain's smile.

"Just recall, Mr Black, that while the Dean has always desired cause to be rid of me, I’m teaching you the reason why he never can _._ Give me a _hint_ of trouble, and I’ll eat you alive."

.

•─────⋅☾ ⋅ ☽⋅─────•

.

Teaching Casper had proved to be an … enlightening experience.

Trapped within the dim corners of Cain's office, the boy choked on the floor, retching up blood thick and black under the moonlight. Cain watched it pool on the carpet with a strange hunger stirring through his gut. The itching desire to grip the boy's jaw and run his tongue along those full lips, filling his mouth with copper and delight.

A few more gags, and with heavy, gasping breaths, Casper's eyes found Cain's through the gloom. Something darkly smouldering lit his gaze, the shaky grin twisting the scars in his cheek to pleasing grotesquery. "Did you see that?"

Cain idled his chair back and forth, the mechanism squeaking as it turned. The dregs of his whiskey swirled amber around the glass. "What, you ruining my carpet? They dock my pay for dry cleaning blood, you know."

Laughter burst from Casper's lips, bright and loud and wild. An esotery of his Cain couldn't quite understand. Without exception, time spent in his company turned laughter from gratingly obsequious to hysterical giggles stemmed in fear. Casper, as in all other things, was just the opposite. Cain had tried making the most obscenely inane jokes he could muster up yet the boy still giggled and scrunched his nose despite Cain wanting to puncture his own ear drums so at least he wouldn't have to hear himself say such _drivel._

"You did see it." Casper rasped the words with such certainty that Cain had to wonder why he'd bothered to ask in the first place. He'd spent the first few weeks subtly mocking it until he'd realised Casper only made so many more obvious comments that it'd felt like him jeering at Cain in return.

So Cain indulged him with a small smile. "I did."

And he had. And it'd been _incredible._ The toxic black-green of his magic had writhed through the room so thick Cain had thought he might suffocate on it. Not only did Casper bathe in that glut of darkness and rot, the power and intelligence that seeped from his bones was … almost – _almost_ – breathtaking.

What was far more enthralling was that no matter how much energy Cain fed the boy, he kept standing long past when anyone else should have violently mutated into a writhing mass of skin and organic mush. Only natural to test it, of course. To find his _limits,_ and that exact dose of energy to bring the boy bleeding to his knees, and yet — _nothing_.

It almost became therapeutic, feeding the boy energy that should have melted his insides. Imagining it, even — blood seeping from Casper's lips and nose while he chatted idly, rolling a cigarette, or refused Cain's proddings about a freshly split lip. At the very least, it eased this headache. Strange, how the same stagnant power that nailed through Cain's skull made Casper shiver so ... delightfully.

Absorption still seemed to tax him. It indicated Cain alone could use him so — a pleasing thought, certainly, but he'd need another case to prove himself right.

Either way, Cain didn't tell the boy. It'd snatch that little glint of fear from his eyes, and something about the way it lay side-by-side with eagerness told Cain that Casper would miss it too.

Now if the boy truly had this strange tolerance of Cain's magic, he had an entirely new host of—

"Shit!"

A crash jolted Cain from his drifting thoughts just in time to see Casper go down on his ass beside the wreckage of Cain's coat stand. Ragged breathing filled the pause, and under the fresh splash of light cast across his face, sweat sheened across his sallow skin.

Some strange jolt went through Cain's chest and he found himself kneeling beside Casper without quite realising he'd gotten there. His heart beat just a little too quick.

God, he looked sickly. Had something gone wrong? Was he—

The corners of Casper's lips twitched. "Sorry. Feeling a bit rough."

 _Oh._ His own exhaustion. The tightness around Cain's chest eased, and he sunk back onto his heels, carding his fingers back through his hair. Some inexplicably dopey smile had bloomed on Casper's face, stretching out his chapped lips. His head tipped back against the wood-panelled wall, and long, thick eyelashes guarded his hooded eyes.

He looked at Cain though. And Cain's mouth felt strangely dry looking back.

Blood still stained the gaps between his teeth.

Sighing, Cain pulled his eyes away, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I could have sworn I told you I'm not babysitting you if you're careless enough to exhaust yourself."

"I didn't ask you to." Casper stuck his tongue out, a cheeky, mocking gesture that Cain came dangerously close to laughing at. "I can crawl just fine."

"Stay there."

Cain got up before he could consider how unduly happy Casper looked with that command. A breakfast bar of some kind languished in his desk drawer, and Cain took that and a bottle of water over to Casper. One of his displaced coats did well enough as a blanket. All sound of Casper's breathing ceased when Cain knelt in front of him and guided the coat around his shoulders. This close, the copper tang of blood filled the air, twisting through the cigarette smoke that stuck to Casper's clothes.

And … something a little like black cherry.

A red flush had lifted in Casper's cheeks when Cain sat back, and that held breath left the boy in a gasp. Where the scars on his cheek struck through the blush, a limned outline of dead white interrupted it. Like white sand atolls gathered on a sea of dilute blood.

Strange, wasn't it, that such a force could look so fragile. Amongst the sea of black clothes, Casper looked like a doll. His eyes glinted like black buttons catching a spotlight.

Cain had always liked broken things, and no matter how much like a doll Casper looked, the clumsy splash of rosebud paint at his lips had chipped and the fists clenched around the water bottle in his lap were ragged and torn. And those scars, the marks where the dollmaker had cast his failure aside to gouge its face on the splintered floor.

It all made him so much more beautiful.

Beautiful. Cain shook his head, eyes pressed closed and his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose like he could squeeze that image out of his mind. How stupid. But the boy's practice did always put a glut of energy in the air, enough that Cain must have built up far more than usual. Enough for wayward thoughts.

Yes, that was all. God, his headache was going to be awful tomorrow.

Casper's skin was back to sallow normality as Cain eased himself down beside him. Not much space here. A tall bookshelf rose precariously to his right and to Casper's left, its twin slumped against the front wall. Even through the tangle of fabric shrouding Casper, a little warmth still sunk into Cain's skin.

Casper glanced up, fiddling with the breakfast bar. "I'm gonna try drawing a bit out from you next time. But like … not take it in, see if I can use it to push the external equilibrium a bit further and get more to build up. I think I _almost_ had something really good."

Something grudging twitched at the corners of Cain's mouth. The boy kept doing that now. Jumping about three steps ahead of what Cain had planned to teach him. It really was dreadfully endearing.

Silence pressed cotton stuffing into the corners of the room. Casper ate louder than Cain liked, the sound like crumbs sticking in the wool, and he gulped water like a man dying of thirst, head tipped back to bare lovebites scattered up the column of his throat. Mottled merlot stickling his skin in the gloom.

Cain caught his chin before he could lower it. Hard, given Casper’s sharp hiss, but the single jerk of his head made a pathetic attempt to escape the grip. Casper’s lips trembled around bared teeth, and the black buttons of his irises stuck to the corners of his eyes.

On Cain.

He dipped his head, and Casper's throat convulsed as Cain's breath ghosted against his neck. "Hey—"

"Don't move."

A strange, throbbing ache went through Cain's chest at the sound Casper made. Anchored lower, hot and knotted in his groin, at the rasp of rough fabric against his cheek and that something-cherry gathered thick at the crook of Casper's neck. And … something else.

What was it?

Cain breathed deep, the air damp and hot on his tongue. Something strange. Something too bright that didn't belong.

His gaze trailed over those bruises, drinking up the way they marred the pallor of Casper's skin, the delicate flutter of his pulse beneath. Exposed; heart forcing blood through those flimsy veins, and with the ragged pants of Casper's breath, how _quick_ must it be. A heartbeat more like the frantic patter of a bird should Cain just rest his lips against his skin to feel it.

Just like someone else had.

This morning. Last night.

A spike of foulness in his chest drew out words so low they were nothing but ink staining the wool around them black. “Don’t come to my office with these again.”

Because these flames licking against Cain's throat _begged_ for the taste of his skin. And if it happened again—

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Casper hissed, thigh pressed against Cain's with suffocating heat.

If he felt it again, he wasn't sure if he could resist.

Cain choked down the feeling and growled in Casper's ear. “No, but if you do, I’ll give you some on the other side. And I won't be _pleasant_ about it.”

"Guess I'll have to get some more then."

Cain jerked back, the wood thumping through his shoulder blades. A seizing gripped his lungs as if he’d breathed in a lungful of black salt. Bloody brat didn't know what he was talking about. Playing _coy_ like Cain would leave skin to cover the blood that gathered beneath his teeth. Leave traces of marks that someone _else_ put—

Marks. Cain shook his head, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. But no matter how hard he pressed it didn't blot out this heat that had spread from his skull down to the tingling tips of his toes, nor the way that knot of anger had found its way so _low._ Marks didn't fucking matter, so what was this feeling? The way black cherry mingled with bitter scum behind his teeth?

Casper was so warm. So small and warm and lovely beside him and Cain just wanted to pull him closer and drink in the smell of him and replace all that didn't belong with himself. Like if Casper was close enough it'd make this ache go away.

"Cain—"

A sharp hiss shut him up. Several segues into mentally reciting his intro lecture to Theories and Methods in Advanced Augmentation and this bizarre desperation crept reticently into something a bit less urgent.

"You should go," Cain told Casper.

No response. The boy's ragged hair hung in his eyes and his chin rested on his chest, although a sharp elbow in the side had him startling awake. The buttons of his eyes lost the gleam behind the sleep, but he looked even more the broken doll with his face scrunched up like that.

Casper spoke before Cain could repeat himself, voice slow and slurred behind the hand he rubbed over his face. "Hey, Cain?"

"Professor."

Casper gave him a _look_ behind that hand, almost lost to shadow and gloom. It left Cain feeling strangely chagrined, at least until Casper's eyes went doey again. Slow blinks dusky with night and thick eyelashes.

"I had this dream… Just made me think what if you didn't have to get around finding a way to take it right? We're both fuckin' stupid controlling idiots fixed on Augmentation and Absorption, but like…"

Casper yawned, shifting a little to settle deeper into Cain's side. His heat alongside what gathered in Cain's cramped office was like curling up beneath the covers late, late at night. If the lamp was off, only the underglow of the streetlights would seep into the sleepy gloom.

And Cain wanted the lamp off. He wanted nothing to exist beyond where Casper's knees pressed into his thigh.

"Like what?" A tremble cradled the breathless edge of his words.

"Bestowal. Daud's Law still goes, and it's kinda stupid because you need someone to wanna give you anything at all, but do it both ways – it'd be like symbiosis. I reckon magic won’t mind so much if you really wanna give it. Still gotta hold it all but you know…"

Cain blinked at the dark hollow beneath the desk. The carpet was worn away there, a threadbare patch of cream where his heels rested all those hours hunched over in that chair. "Yes… Yes, I suppose it would."

A snort, and Casper sunk in deeper against his arm. The bulk of the coat almost drowned him. "Guess you never thought about it 'cause you'd actually need to trust someone else to give it back."

"There's no one not so stupid and weak that the entire concept wouldn’t fail anyway."

The truth, both parts. And truthfully, it'd been amongst the first theories that had crossed Cain's mind when he first dipped his toes into this pool of research, one he discarded with a sneer of distaste because first, no one was good enough, and second, _trust_ was a concept that hadn't sullied his vocabulary since he was hardly old enough to grasp its weight.

Third, it did him no good now anyway, and it smarted that such weakness could give others what had near destroyed him to gain.

Cain pressed his eyes closed, shutting away the shadows that crept out of the gloom. Not now. Not _ever,_ but especially not now while the boy's head settled against his shoulder. Turned a little, so that the sultry damp of his breath gathered beneath Cain's shirt.

So warm.

What if there was something special about him? Something more than the alcohol warming Cain's cheeks.

"Casper?"

A sleepy mumble as he rubbed his face against Cain's arm. Something tightened in Cain's chest, and made it remarkably hard to breathe.

"Why do you so desperately seek power?"

"'Cause I don't want someone to control me ever again."

It felt like moments later the first soft snore drifted up from where Casper rested his head, and not longer after that the first bitter gasp of tears escaped the tight press of Cain's lips.

.

•─────⋅☾ ⋅ ☽⋅─────•

.

Cain felt right again in the morning. He woke early from a smothering, dreamless sleep and shoved Casper off him, rolling kinks out of his shoulders as he dug painkillers and coffee change out of his desk drawer.

"Can't I just stay here?" Casper asked, hovering by the door still swamped in Cain's coat. "I want to try that absorption again, see if I cough up less blood next time."

As much as the idea was tempting, Cain had a lecture this morning and about three hours of research and grading to squeeze in before it. Not to mention something about the thought of Casper's blood cast to its true crimson in daylight felt sacrilege.

"I teach you Thursday evenings only, and it's not Thursday evening any longer."

Casper gave a mocking pout, one that curled through the scars on his cheek. In the daylight, he still looked like a wretched sort of doll, and Cain's chest still itched to hold him there.

"You don't have time?"

"I don't have time."

"I don't know why you bother with this shit." Casper had his hand on the doorknob, but like they both stood at an impasse of the unknown, he hadn't opened it. "It's not like this shitty university has everything there is to know about magic. Especially not for you." A frown drew Casper's surly brows together. Pouting. Cain could hardly look away from his lips when he pouted, the fullness of them and the catches of broken skin. "Don't you ever want to live a little?"

Over the low rumble of an engine, pneumatics hissed. A mechanical rush calling herald to the wave of voices that swept up from below. Cain washed the painkillers down with some water and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. It was seven in the morning and this headache would only get worse.

Too long without release.

"Believe it or not, I need a job. This one has more useful benefits than a dental plan."

"We'd make something work." The words were low, but they still drew Cain's eyes, a jolt going through his chest. Thin light lit up Casper's dark hair like a halo, but the black buttons of his eyes were turned away. He kept talking; a thumping built between Cain's ears. "You know, me and you. We'd pull some shit together wherever we wound up and … and like maybe we could—"

"And why," Cain said, his words sharp with spite because maybe spite would stop the room swirling so strangely, "would _I_ want to go anywhere with some shitty little dirty brat like you?"

A snarl broke across Casper's face. One like knives and frothing with black-green magic. The kind that deserved a hand closed around his throat and Cain tearing at the lips that dared spit back at him, grinding the boy's spine into the wall.

Close.

_So warm._

The blind shout burst from his mouth too loud. Far, far too loud for the footsteps and voices that already travelled the hall outside, but the ache in his skull and this knot in his gut and he _couldn't—_

"And for that matter, why the _fuck_ would you ever want to go anywhere with someone like me? Just piss off, alright?"

"Cain—"

Cain stalked over and hauled his office door open. Two students and the doddering old git who kept the office opposite him ogled at Cain shoving Casper outside. He leant in close to hiss in the boy’s incensed face. " _Professor_. And I said I only have time Thursday evenings."

" _Cunt._ " Casper snatched the handle and slammed the door, the weight of it like a sledgehammer against Cain’s skull. Papers rustled, and with a snarl, Cain spun around and shoved everything off his desk with a sweep of his arm to storm around him and shatter on the floor.

Stupid. Bloody _stupid._ He collapsed into his chair, fingers a vice over the bridge of his nose, and stayed there until the painkillers and the tumbler of whiskey kicked in enough that every wince of sound didn't grate across his brain.

Casper couldn't come back. _The boy_ couldn't come back. Oh, it'd been dreadfully fun but when _fun_ got under his skin like this, the way Casper had crawled like a worm through his eye to make a nest in his brain…

Blood spilling black over full lips, and the way it stained the gaps between his teeth when he grinned. That was violence and obscenity and indulgence.

Better not to think what crying while the boy slept against his arm meant.

.

•─────⋅☾ ⋅ ☽⋅─────•

.

Casper never came to the lecture that evening, and when Cain lost his train of thought for about the third time in quarter of an hour staring at the empty space at the back of the room, he'd decided it best to ask the pertinent question.

"Where's the boy?"

Blank faces met his tart question, and Cain hissed, pinching the bridge of his. He gestured sharply at the single empty seat. "The _boy._ Casper Black. Where is he?"

More vacancy, but mutters with it this time at least. Casper, as the boy had told him, didn't do friends.

Smiled afterward, big coy eyes and a curve to his full lips. Black hair had cast curling shadows where it fell in his face.

Cain had mocked him mercilessly for the implication that they might be _friends,_ but Casper never quite lost that idle surety.

No wonder, because now he stained Cain’s thoughts like poison.

God knew how long his mind wandered that time, a cascade of black buttons and chipped red paint where his brain should be, because next he heard was scuffles and muttering. All the students near to the pokey little window had their heads bobbing and ducking like brainless meercats, gaping at something outside.

" _What_?"

Most of them didn't listen. One, near the back, turned tense-faced to Cain. "Professor, I think someone should get the Dean."

Another student laughed, out of their seat with their face pressed against the window. "Are you kidding? I've never seen anyone throw lightning like that! Cool!"

_Cock._

Cain took off without a word, stalking through the corridors full of blinding noise and wailing lights. There were eyes on him – not many, and they still shied from his passing, but it was _enough._ It was new. It was ogling faces as he shoved the boy out of his office and it was too much like a taste of the past.

Too much mocking, not enough _fear._

The headache twisted deeper. It grew roots through his skull and knotted so tight in his temple it was hard to see.

While Cain liked broken things, it came with the caveat that weak things he hated beyond all else. He'd never been a strong mage, not when his potential was as twisted and withered as the shell that stumbled through the fluidities of magecraft, and all these _fools_ that thronged through the halls, rubbing shoulders with him as if he were _one of them_ – they’d never understand the true horrors some must wreak for power.

For _control_ over a life that spiralled with maddening ferocity out of your spasming claws.

Illusion, nature, the physical forced into your bones. The power to grind your body through sheer pain and force of will into the shape of _something else_ , all while a constant bloom of entropy sought to tear it apart.

Because neither did they know the way potential could burn through your mind from the inside out as it built beneath your skin.

What did it matter? What did it matter? What did it fucking matter? All he'd done to make himself _right,_ and he still fell apart.

At the exit from the building, Cain put his back against the rough stone wall. There was magic here, brimming closer to the surface than even those halls packed with mages, tingling white blotches behind his vision with all the shouts that filled the air. That gluttonous mouth at Cain’s core gorged on it, but already, sweat gathered at his throat and his mind pressed swollen against the inside of his skull.

What was he doing here? Wasn't this Icarus? The boy's beautiful catastrophe; a final reach for the scorching plumes of the sun before he went up in flames. Usually, the thought would fill him with a luxurious delight, a sip of black cherry wine as he watched his own seed of chaos bloom.

Usually it wasn't Casper.

Cain ground the heel of his hand into his skull. Gasping with the way the burgeoning energy seared his brain, he let it scorch his veins and pour into his palm and _ignite._

The ball of flame stung his skin, but Cain forced more into it. More, his veins turning black and the fire deepening through orange and white and viscous, scorching blue. A blister raised on his palm, and Cain gritted and ground his teeth against the pain. More. Did Casper know that Cain had all the power he needed but sought only the antidote to the poison of his own hubris? Would the boy jeer? White stitch teeth bristling with needles as he mocked the fool who thought he could own _corruption._

Under the rising moonlight, those buttons stitched into Casper's eyelids gleamed like milky pools, and the fraying cotton of his cheeks snagged around his grin. The flame in Cain's palm vanished, as if the breath that caught in his chest had snuffed it out.

"That's not you."

The hoarseness of Cain's whisper drew a wicked edge to the boy's painted grin. Slow steps, the hem of Cain's coat scraping along the floor.

"Sure, but the realer you make me the better you'll feel."

The boy's hands closed around Cain's, and he groaned at the scorching heat coming off that cotton skin. Casper curled Cain's fingers up into a fist, cradling the injured hand against his chest as his easy steps brought him closer. An inferno; Cain's fucking catastrophe and the way he burned made a magnet to all of the cancer eating away his insides.

Frayed crimson thread stitched the buttons, and it tumbled like blood from the corners of Casper's mouth and his perfect nose.

"You know you dazzle him," the boy rasped. "He looks at you with stars where his buttons should be."

The corners of Cain's eyes stung, a fresh sensation against his cooling skin. "How can he when he's put buttons where my mind should be?"

A girl with the door half-open gave Cain quite possibly the most scathing look he'd ever been on the receiving end of – and he really had gotten quite a number in his time – and he let out a burst of laughter when the next crack of thunder broke the dusky air.

The air around him brimmed black as he took off toward the court.

Stairs plunged to where the lightning stormed a torrent into the sky, and like colosseum stands, they thronged with students who long should have run. _Humans._ Six professors wove spells beneath amber lanterns, wispy magic stirring red and indigo and gold.

None of it made more than parlor tricks to the boy drowning in that miasma of toxic power.

Cain stopped just before the crowds begun. Mouth dry, heart hammering against his chest. Their fear raged against his skull, but it couldn't reach him.

If he went down there, this was the end.

Or maybe it was more. An advent. The stirring in his gut that had never left since Casper grinned at him from the office door. The apple Casper sunk his teeth into had never been the one Cain offered him, and Cain was lowly Adam begging a taste of crisp awakening where before he'd tasted only rot.

Cain descended the steps. Perhaps if this moment had been for anyone but him, the jostling crowds might have parted, but it felt right, somehow, elbowing aside uncaring bodies that cowered the moment his dark energy licked at their skin. For the first time, perhaps, he truly let this energy flow out of him, trembling in the earth beneath his feet and whipping a storm through the air. Static crackled across his skin, lashing out to join the torrent Casper raised to the sky. Like Death on his white horse, Cain went to his apocalypse.

The moment Cain set foot on the floor of the colosseum, the Dean broke the crowd straightening the edges of his crisp suit. His sharp features stayed cool as he batted away Casper's serpentine strike of lightning on a flash of curdling silver. Thunder was constant down here, drowning words, and behind the static suffusing the air, there was something _else._ Something insidious.

A leech.

Cain drew a protective spell against it. Already, he could see some of the weaker mages flagging, and yet, none noticed. Because this was Cain's Augmentation and it was made for subterfuge. Despite his aptitude being in Manipulation, he had his tenure in this field for a reason. This particular one was the spell from last night – a leech bound up and hidden away in massive absorption, the same foul thing that snapped its jaw in the core of him.

But Casper had made it magnificent.

Bright laughter burst past Cain's lips. _Look at him. God, look at him._ Casper arched within his storm, blackened to a shadow by the colour of his own magic, and the dark shape of his hood twitched left and right, fending back jabs at the shield of lightning even while he drunk down the energy they threw at him.

His smile would be a thing of razors and tangled red thread.

Silver pulsed through the court. The storm broke it, but it burned a ring encircling Casper into the stone. Protection. The vitality went out of the lightning in a blink, and within the miasma, Casper stumbled, his hood twitching as he sought—

The Dean, hands weaving before him with another spell at his fingertips. And as impressive as the boy was, he was still nothing more than a precocious senior, and this little tantrum was about to get obliterated by whatever the Dean drudged up. A show this big with so many humans to see wouldn't pass, nor would those smoking husks gathered in the shadows. Whatever that spell was, it was the end for him one way or another.

Without the influx of magic, Casper flagged. The lightning fizzled out, all energy redirected to a tight swirl around him. The ends of his coat – Cain's coat – fluttered as if the wind slipped through his shield.

And it wouldn't hold.

Cain's heart climbed out of his chest to lodge in his throat, and it beat there so hard and fast the rest of the world slowed and died around him. Silver pulsed, bright even past Casper's shield.

His button-eyed boy.

Cain ran.

Past the silver, Casper's leech tore at his skin. Ate away the energy poisoning his veins. Another few steps, magic darkened the world as if he plunged into black water. Cain threw his arms around Casper, hauling the boy tight against his chest. One hand closed around his throat and the other splayed across his stomach, and the heat pulsing out of Casper's skin set that burn on Cain's hand alight.

And with him held so close, Cain summoned up every last thing he knew about Bestowal and gave the boy _everything_.

With a wet sound like a glub of water splashing against the floor, the protection spell exploded.

Choking, Casper arched against him, and Cain held him, face buried in his neck. Drunk on power and euphoria and the scent of black cherry whiskey and blood.

Blood.

 _Cock_.

The boy's knees went a moment later, a ragdoll in Cain's grip as he heaved up blood. It poured from his nose and splattered against the stone.

"Casper?" Panic made a knot beneath Cain's tongue, the cold radiating from it oblitering those groaning mages and the panicked fleeing of students, mage and human alike. Only the boy and the choking and the sprays of black blood gleaming amber beneath the lamplight. "Casper?!"

And the sheer blessed relief as the boy's floundering hand smacked against his arm. Groaning – maybe sobbing – god only knew at this point – Cain hauled him upright. Already that starving mouth at his core slavered down the energy in the air, starving potential filling a void in his gut, but it tasted sweeter in its return. Dark and saccharine.

The way power should be when it hadn't been festering inside him for years.

"Right—" Casper could hardly keep his feet, but he almost could and that loosened the knot around Cain's thoughts enough that the few stirring of mages took centre. That and the shields they'd clearly raised around the court. Cain guided the boy around him, muttering enouragements as he eased the boy up on his back. "Hold on, would you, love? Please hold on, Cas. I need my hands."

Casper's lips were slick and sticky as they pressed against his throat, mouthing sounds that Cain felt as much as heard. "You called me love."

"Piss off."

The Dean looked at Cain with that old fear in his eyes as he gained his feet. No matter that Cain backed across the colosseum toward flight.

And so he should, because Cain had finally found a catastrophe to wield that could shatter worlds.

.

•─────⋅☾ ⋅ ☽⋅─────•

.

In the cark park of a roadside diner, Cain finally cut the engine. For an eternity, there was nothing but thick black trees sliced through by potholed, leaf-strewn asphalt.

The boy was asleep, had been for miles and miles. He'd looked so peaceful under the thin glow of moonlight and the backdraft of the headlights, and still, Cain couldn't quite bear to clean the black blood off his upturned face.

So much of it. Soaked into the neck of his hoodie and the collar of Cain's shirt, and the stickiness of it puckered Cain's neck as it dried, but Casper breathed easy now behind the catch of snores.

He was alright, black buttons shut away behind lids bruised lilac with lack of sleep.

Cain woke him once he'd fetched them a coffee each and the only vegetarian thing on the tiny menu, the blood around his neck obscured from the human waitress by this new, freshly sweet energy that tingled through his veins.

"Casper?"

Nothing. Although, he could've sworn the boy's eyes had flickered open when he'd opened the car door.

Sighing, Cain twisted around in his seat and shook the boy's far shoulder, his other arm propped up on the back of the seat. "Casper?"

The boy's eyes opened, and his lips curved so cleanly into a smile it was as if he'd never been asleep. Amber pooled over the high points of his face, mingling with the flickering neon of the diner's sign. His teeth gleamed.

"I could get used to waking up with you here."

"Are you feeling alright?"

All that blood. The vast storm of energy forced through his body as if he were no more than an avatar for Cain's power, and … here he was – a catastrophic miracle. His dopey smile struck a chime of wonder inside Cain's chest, echoing its sweet tune through his limbs.

Casper nodded, tilting his head so it rested against Cain's arm. Just fine. Something anchored in Cain's lungs, an ache as the boy's sweet smile tugged on the very core of him.

"I'm glad you're alright," Cain said hoarsely, lamely.

The boy smiled anyway and rubbed his head deeper against Cain's arm. A little like a cat. "I didn't think I would be after what you did… It was like…" Casper took a deep breath. "It was like breathing in the universe."

 _Oh._ Cain pressed his lips tight and took a focussing breath. “That’s nice.”

"You're not telling me something about you."

"Obviously." And how _presumptuous_ of him to assume Cain would have told him anything at all.

"Fair. Guess I gave us plenty of time to find out now."

Yes… The boy's words brought a spike of reality into this dark, diner-lit dream. "What happened?"

The huge coat swallowed Casper's shrug, but Cain felt it beneath his hand. Nothing in the world could disguise the wickedness in that grin. "That group of cowards who beat up the one-armed kid get real touchy if you talk shit about their golden girl."

"You—" Cain sunk back into his seat, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Something tightened in his temple but the grip of his fingers staved it off. "Do you have _any_ idea how much your bloody tantrum has cost me?"

 _Everything._ The corpses on the ground, the smoking eyes, and an exposure of their kind so gargantuan that they may never recover from it – it put them as close to criminals as any mage could get.

Every single thing that mattered was trapped in his office – _gone._ Just like that. Casper's rasping giggle was a needle stuck straight through his eye to this knotting anger.

"That's _everything_! Everything I've bloody worked for my entire life just—just bloody _gone_ because you had to be a sour prick about it." Cain groaned, rubbing his fingers into the tension around his brow _._ "I should never have bloody bothered. Clearly you're too stupid to deserve the effort, and now look where I am."

"You did though."

Cain ignored the strange sound of those words. "I shouldn't have."

"But you did."

Casper's head tipped back, baring the hollows of his throat to the light. Crimson-amber drizzled over his features, casting crow's wing shadows of his eyelashes across his cheeks.

And he smiled like fucking euphoria. "I knew you'd come for me."

Oh.

Of course, how stupid.

Cain lunged across the car. Jammed his back against the dashboard so all his weight pinned Casper to the seat by his throat. His lips looked just as fucking beautiful as Cain always dreamed while he strained for breath. Colour darkened his face beneath the neon glow, and those panicked, ecstatic black eyes stitched up the knot throbbing through Cain's skull and drew it _tight._

"You stupid fucking _brat,_ " Cain snarled. "You think this is a game, do you? I’ll fucking _kill_ you.”

Fingers clawed at Cain's wrists. He slammed one of Casper's hands against the doorframe and shifted his weight so the arm pinning Casper's throat trapped him back against the seat. Pain winced through the boy's face as Cain's knee jammed into his thigh even as he gasped down fresh breath and _grinned_.

His pulse throbbed against Cain's thumb; that life that seethed out of him, burning Cain's palm and sinking into his legs. Blood squirming just beneath the surface as he dug in.

All of it gone, and the boy had done it _on purpose._

"I was going to be Dean! I was _this_ close to getting my full tenure and you—"

Casper’s hoarse voice cut across him. "No you weren't."

“Yes, I fucking—”

“He’s _scared_ of you,” Casper hissed. “You told me and I saw it. They’re all too scared of you and they hate you too much to give you anything, no matter _how_ hard you—”

Cain shifted his grip up, fingers digging behind the boy’s jaw and cutting off his words.

His vision swum, anger warring with crumbling unreality. All ground to a haze outside the clarity of colours and shadows slipping over Casper’s face.

"You had _no right._ No _fucking_ right taking that from me." Cain shook him. He wasn't even sure what clawed at him, whether it was anger or hurt or fear, but whatever it was it knotted through his skull and burned his eyes like a plague. "It's not just my job! That was _everything_ I've worked for my whole bloody life and if you _knew—_ "

Casper jerked beneath him. Strained against Cain's grip, and an ache swelled as Casper’s arching heat pressed against the inside of his thighs. The awe and the straining lips and the way his eyes rolled back with euphoria as Cain choked him, it was all so bloody beautiful and what if he just … didn't let go?

Pay back this game. Squeeze until his hand ached and those delicious shudders died beneath him. Skin turning purple, features slack, feel that last, copper-tinged breath against his lips as the boy's black button eyes snuffed out.

Gasping, Cain forced his grip open. The boy choked, but beneath Cain's pinning weight, he could only squirm. This close, Cain felt all of it grinding against him. And—

_Oh._

Heat flushed through Cain's cheeks, the warmth plunging through him at the pitiful _sound_ Casper made when Cain shifted away from his hips and—and _that_. But not away. The way his small, taut body shook was too precious to lose. Cain trailed the fingers that had choked him along Casper's jaw and relished each tremor that went through him, each time his breath _caught._

And quite suddenly, that was all that mattered. Because the boy was right. It took the loss of everything to open his eyes, and just look what he'd gained in return.

His apocalypse, bundled up in black fabric with twinkling stars where his buttons should be.

“What now?” Cain's whisper came hoarse in the lull of the night. Only Casper’s wheezing breaths broke it, choking as Cain traced the boy's brow.

Soft, no matter how hard and ragged the rest of him looked, but when Cain slid his fingers into Casper’s hair, the tangles felt like home.

His chest ached. Why did everything ache so, so much? This shift had brought so close, close enough that the damp heat of Casper’s breaths panted over his lips. Galaxies spun in the boy’s eyes, a little glimpse of desperate rapture while his fingers twisted into the side of Cain’s shirt.

Cain had almost forgotten he asked the question when Casper responded, words felt as much as heard in the whispers over his skin. “We live.”

“Why me?”

Casper pressed up further, his boot planting on Cain’s ankle to lever his free leg into the space between Cain’s. He gasped at the pressure, at the heat and the hardness he'd just escaped. At the way Casper’s nose wrinkled around his giggles as he turned his face up to Cain.

“’Cause you’re so fucking incredible, but you still ask that fucking question like I’m the special one.”

The last of that spinning confusion burned off, a galactic vapour unveiling a glimmering certainty in that vastness of blind possibility. Casper _was_ special. Flawed and wild and impetuous and _brilliant._ Devastation trapped in the small, hard body burning need into Cain’s skin.

For the _trick,_ there must be punishment, of course, but simply killing him would be such a waste. No, whether the boy knew it or not, it was punishment enough that every last inch of him now belonged _entirely_ to Cain.

So why did the thought make him tremble? Not drunk on the heady power of it – not wholly – but a strange, softness in that dark. The one that made a bird's flutter of his heartbeat as he dipped his head.

Cain brushed his lips against Casper's, and just how he'd _dreamed,_ the slightest touch of that chapped skin sent sparks through his veins. The boy whimpered as he opened his mouth, straining closer against Cain’s grip, and that needy sound crumbled everything else away. Cain kissed him, once more pouring everything he had into his catastrophic boy with the black button eyes and the mouth coated in black cherry sin.

Casper clawed at him, pleading, and fumbling and clumsy, Cain swung them both back into the driver’s seat, planting the boy on his lap and jamming the seat right back as Casper’s heat engulfed him.

A long time later, they drove along the isolated streak of blacktop into the sunrise blush, their fingers twined together atop the gearstick. The boy said something, the white thread smile impish under the touch of morning, and Cain laughed solely for the fact that they were here, they were together, and they were free.

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End! aaaaah this was like the first actual short story i've ever written which is pretty exciting. Let me know what you think! I hope this was an interesting insight into Cain's character or at least an interesting read. Lowkey enjoyed giving Casper some agency for a change as well! (some being operative here)
> 
> Thanks all for reading! Regular updates resume next week~


	41. Dead All Along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casper breaks down again, but this time in a very different way. 
> 
> CW: Explicit references to past abuse & heavily distorted mental state

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels like it's been ages since I posted anything on AO3 (knowing me I've missed a week without realising, so sorry all if I did!)

Casper’s escape didn’t get far. A second before his hand closed on the door to his bedroom stairs, black sorcery swamped it. Another miasmic wall blocked his escape down the hall. Sure had to be some rules against the other guy having some fucking sorcery in these sorts of arguments, ‘cause now Casper couldn’t do shit but wait – grind his skull into concrete while the muffled taps of Cain’s footsteps approached. The vapour off the sorcery on the door burnt the side of his face, a scorching cold biting his bones.

His chest ached. Wet hitches choking through his lungs and suffocating him.

“Cas—”

“ _What_?” Casper rasped the word with as much venom as he could muster.

A sigh echoed through the silent hall. A deep one. Rough. Cain planted his hand high above Casper’s head on the wall, the translucent folds of his soaked shirt inches away.

“Would you like to hear what you’re going to do, Cas?”

His voice was flat, but with an indulgent definitiveness that almost had Casper nodding without thought. Fuck that. Casper hissed, opening his mouth to spit something, but Cain talked over him, a stern tone that brooked no interruption.

“You’re going to go up to your room and get changed, and then you’re going to come down to my study and we’re going to have a talk, is that—”

“No!” Casper twisted away from Cain. His feet caught, staggering backward, but Cain snared him by the arm before he could go further, a stiff grip with fingers boring into Casper’s upper arm. “Get the fuck—”

Cain’s eyes stayed hard and cool, but his hand shook. All of him shook, really, but tremors in his hand jarred Casper’s bones. “We are going to have a talk, Casper. That’s that. End of. Don’t make me come fetch you.”

Casper jerked his arm out of Cain’s grip and retreated toward the sorcery at his back. The rot plastered to his tongue. “ _Fine._ ”

Let the cunt shatter his make-believe by making him then. ‘Cause Casper didn’t want to talk to him. Not at all. No matter the way the lamplight caught the twist of Cain’s lips, and the wet sheen across his eyes as he turned away and how bad it made his chest hurt. It didn’t matter.

“I hate you.”

Cain flinched, a shudder going through his shoulders and down his spine, but he drew himself out of it straighter, the tension in his jaw just visible from behind in the jutting bone. Without speaking, he stalked off down the corridor, and the rot vanished from the air.

Casper got changed, but he didn’t go down. Not until R2 found him sat beside the vast window in a haze of half-sleep and passed him a note.

‘ _Come talk to me, love. I miss you. I hate knowing you’re upset._ ’

Hissing, Casper closed his fist around it, eyes pressed shut as he ground his head against the cold glass of the window. Perhaps he’d really fallen asleep, because now instead of sickly morning, the slanting afternoon sun lanced into his face, turning the inside of his eyelids burning pink.

It still hurt. Hurt like he’d ripped his own heart out – or whatever shrivelled miserable thing had played as one – and ground it into the miserable bog outside.

The grounds were the only piece of this place that showed the isolation – rolling lawns and manicured hedges that’d once been beautiful were tangled and torn with wind-swept decay. Casper liked it better this way. Now the grounds looked just like his insides.

Maybe they’d keep Cain company just as well when he got out.

Swallowing the knot in his throat, Casper used the wall to get up. Legs shook. They shook really bad, and his chest still felt so tight he could hardly stand straight. But he’d had worse. Fuck, he’d had it so bad he had to crawl to keep going and he’d still fucking dragged his battered corpse onward.

The paper of the note ripped as he ground it in his fist, trudging down the stairs, and his teeth ground so hard it felt as if the two standing guard either side of the gap might _snap._ None of this fucking hurt was real and the day he let it control him was the _end._ The end of hope, the end of freedom, the end of any fucking chance for taking control of his own life.

So he went downstairs. Slapped a sunny smile right on his ghoulish face as he pushed open the study door and didn’t let the thing crumble. No matter how deep the pang in his chest went as he took in Cain slumped behind his desk, messy hair and red-rimmed eyes and his head in his hand. The slant of thick yellow light caught the slightest sheen of wetness on the heel of his palm and lit up his ring like a sun.

And whatever he saw in Casper’s face when he glanced up made him flinch.

Casper swallowed again, resisting the urge to rub at the ache in his chest and made himself smile wider. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yes.” The old chair groaned as Cain turned to face the door, sitting up a little. But whatever he’d been going to say next, he hesitated, lips pursing as he studied Casper’s face. “Cas… You don’t have to pretend you’re alright like that.”

A spasm went through Casper’s chest and he stumbled back, hand knocking against the doorknob. “I’m not—”

“No! No… Not like that – you just—” Cain sunk back into his chair, chagrined twist to his lips, and gestured to his face. “Your—Your nose wrinkles up when you’re really smiling…” He shook his head, hand rubbing over his face. “I’m sorry.”

For the moment when Cain’s eyes squeezed shut, hiding away the way his gaze drew a knife through between Casper’s ribs, Casper let the smile die, fist clenched against the sodden ache in his chest.

It just … it really, _really_ hurt.

“Cas, love…”

Cain’s murmur cradled the air, and with a ragged breath, Casper met his eyes. He’d never known that shade of brown could make such a tragic colour when it caught golden in the sun. Cain’s lips trembled, pulling out into a pathetic imitation of a smile as he spread his hand across his paper-strewn desk.

It wasn’t real, because when Cain smiled it filled his whole face.

“Come here, love. And … and we don’t have to talk if you don’t want. We can just—just be normal. If you want.”

A shudder gripped him, a wrench through his gut that was so deep an urge to curl up in Cain’s arms that he almost ran. But this was what he had to do, so why not just … give in.

Cain smiled like a slice of sunshine beneath a stream when Casper came over, and he twisted his chair and opened his arms to welcome him in. Strong, so strong and safe, Cain pulled him into his lap and wrapped him up in lukewarm bliss.

He smelt like whiskey and coffee and pine.

Cain buried his face in Casper’s hair, lips shaping around his name while his chest trembled beneath Casper’s. Soft words, choked up with feeling. “I love you, Cassie. _God_ , it breaks my heart when you’re hurting, my love. I just love you so, so much.”

It was perfection, and Casper just wanted to die, because none of it was real.

Over the back of the chair, the soft lamps turned that crystal-fronted cabinet to a mirror and obscured the dark shapes within. Lips trembling, and his own riotous features stared back at him out of the ghoul’s horrific face. He wanted to tear away, but he couldn’t move. It was like if he stared hard enough, he’d see through the frosted glass, see the shrine to all the Lost Boys and the one lost boy that none of them would ever be.

The one Casper could never, ever be.

“You don’t love me.” Cain froze at his hollow rasp. The ghoul tipped its head back and forth as he spoke. Its mouth moved around a single word to a metronome beat. _True. True. True._ “You love whichever boy first broke you.”

And it hurt. That’s why he’d fucking run away because it _hurt._ Cain making eyes at a picture of a boy who wasn’t him, because the only reason he loved Casper was because crazy said he was someone else. A whimper slipped unhindered past his lips, his hands like claws in Cain’s shoulders. Even the man that loved him like this didn’t really love _him._

“How long do I have left until you kill me too?”

Cain surged to his feet. In the moment of weightlessness, Casper screamed, clutching to Cain as he twisted them—

The breath slammed out of his lungs. Solid wood a bruise against his back and Cain’s hand a cushion cradling his head. Cain pushed him down, hips grinding in, forearms flat on the table and elbows hemming Casper in. Tears slipped from his reddened eyes, lips tight and desperate around his ragged breaths. So close each one cradled Casper’s face in a spring breeze. Fresh, tingling peppermint over whiskey.

“ _Never_ , Cas.” The hiss came taut and rough with the same intensity as his eyes. “I’ve never fucking hurt you. I _will_ never hurt you. This is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever done to you and I’ve done it to try to make you happy. If you _knew_ —If you know how many times I’ve—I’ve watched you _die._ Watched them—” Cain gasped. Fresh tears trickled past his lashes, rivers of liquid diamond down his cheeks. “I could never hurt—”

The scream burst past Casper’s lips on the swell of all this impotent, raging confusion tamped down in his gut. “Stop talking like that! Stop it! It doesn’t make sense and you’re fucking _crazy_. None of it's fucking real and”—Casper shuddered, the truth of the words a bitter weight spreading over his tongue that turned his voice to a broken croak—“and what the fuck am I meant to do? I’m—I’m—”

Casper gasped, his words choking in his chest. Cain and his fucking heartbreak, so close it was making him sick. This was all making him _sick._ His thoughts squirmed from his grasping hands like minnows in a river all while the bull shark of memory bore down on the squirming flesh.

Hand crushing his throat. Dope so thick in his veins he couldn’t breathe. Another body crushed him, and each movement went grunt, bang _, scream._ The spectre in the doorway _—_

_It’s not so bad, Cas. Don’t be a little bitch about—_

Casper slammed his hands into Cain’s chest. “Get _off_! Get off me. Right _now_! Right—”

“Casper! Alright! Alright…”

The pressure vanished. Not a touch but his body still weighed against the hardwood beneath him like an elephant sat on his fucking chest. But now he was _alone._ Cold nipped at his skin and no one stroking his hair and the war made him want to fucking _cry,_ but the tears never came.

_Good boys don’t cry, Cassie._

Moaning, Casper shuddered and curled up on the desk. Paper rustled beneath him and the wood dug like a bruise into the hard points of his bones. Why couldn’t it all go away? Because he deserved it. Because he was a fucking ghoul and he’d always deserved it.

“Casper?” Just the sound of Cain’s voice was like fingers brushing through his hair and a hand shoved down his throat. “Casper, love, I’m sorry...”

“I hate you.” Choked and broken. “I _hate_ you. Why couldn’t I just be good enough as me?”

“Oh Cas, love, _no_... It’s not—God, Cas, you’re so far past good enough.” Cain’s fingers brushed against Casper’s cheek. Light as a feather but his stomach surged, jerked his face away from that touch. He didn’t deserve it. Not on his filthy skin. Cain had ruined his life and he made him _sick._ “Cas, baby, wh—god, what can I do, love? Please let me fix it. I—I don’t know—”

“Let me die. It’ll never go away until I die.”

The ghoul’s hands closed around his throat, choking off his breath and its nails sinking into his skin. If only those skeletal hands could squeeze hard enough to kill him.

Something banged against the desk. Cain’s gasp for air like the ghoul strangled him as well. “ _No!_ I can’t fucking live without you, Cas. I _can’t_. Don’t make me be without you, Cassie. I just—God, all I want is to keep you safe. I _love_ you. I love you so—”

“YOU DON’T!” The shriek tore out of him, energy like a burst of electricity reanimating his foul corpse. Cain fell back, knees giving as he dropped into the chair. And how did he fake the agony in his face so well? “You don't love anything more than a fucking idea. Either you love whatever fucking fixation you’ve projected onto me or you love me from eleven fucking lifetimes ago.”

And there it was, the real horror hiding behind the madness even if the madness wasn’t madness at all.

It choked in his chest so deep he could hardly force out the words. “And if I’m a fucking clone of him then what the fuck am I? I’m _nothing._ I don’t fucking exist.

“And why am I even talking like this?!” Casper dragged his hands back through his hair and jumped off the desk. His feet carried him pacing blindly up and down the room, raking his fingers over his scalp. “It’s not real! You’re fucking crazy! You’ve always been crazy! But maybe it wouldn’t matter if I was actually _me_ to you but I’m fucking not, am I?”

Casper stopped in the centre of the room. His knees shuddered and all at once gave. The rug did nothing to soften the impact. “I’m already just a ghost. I’ve never been anything but a ghost.” Laughter burst from his lips and he tipped his head back. The lights on the ceiling seemed so bright through these black pits pretending to be eyes. “I died already. They all killed me years ago and I’ve never been anything but a ghost.”

For a long time, only the crackling of the hearth and Casper’s ragged breaths broke the heavy silence in the room. His head spun, the ceiling whirling way above him and inches from his face. The ghoul croaked, circling him with its teeth gnashing and Casper clenched down on the spines of his teeth to stop himself snapping back.

It all made sense now.

He was already dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the usual for these two, but it looks like Cassie's got something very different on his mind this time huh - this night is going to be a looooong one


	42. Broken Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casper finally tells Cain a little about his past, in amongst all the mental disintegration. It's little wonder he's so bothered by fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Explicit references to past abuse & depiction of heavily unstable mental states

Footsteps tapped against the floor. Slow, careful heel-to-toes. Casper didn't move, even when they stopped before him and that stranger sunk to the floor. For a long time, nothing. Quiet. Silence. The pain paralyzed even his thoughts to stillness as he waited on the precipice for Cain to say it: _I never loved you. You've always been a ghost._

Or would it just be more lies?

"Shall I sit here and tell you all the things I've found in you to love that I've never seen before, Cas? I could start small, tell you about how even when you try to pretend to be all apathy, if I've made you laugh your nose scrunches up behind your hand. No other you I've known let's that slip. And this you, Cas – there's this part of you that's so bright and playful. It's so beautiful to see. The first you was just the same, but even he'd never have _dared_ touch my work. Just like I'd never catch you with about five metric tonnes of cake stuffed in your mouth like I did him.

"No other you has been a vegetarian, Cas, and I like that. I think it suits you. No other you would"—his voice cracked, a smear of wet across his cheek as he brushed his face—"would've done the stuff you've had to do. I told you before that no you has ever hated the city.

"I think ... I think I have at least an ounce of self-awareness. I fell for it the first go 'round. I fell for an idea and ... and it wasn't good. It was you, but it wasn't _my_ you, and my own expectations cocked it up. Since then – now that I know it will _always_ be you – I look for the differences, and you wouldn't believe how many beautiful things that's opened my eyes to."

Why did Cain have to keep talking? All this sweetness choking in Casper's lungs so thick with sugar-glazed beauty he couldn't breathe around it.

It was fake. He was crazy. He had to be crazy.

Spite burnt his tongue, venom so vile it soured every candyfloss word Cain spun for him in the foul ooze of self-loathing. "If I'm so different to every other _me_ then how fucking crazy are you thinking we're the same. What is it, _love_? Do we have all have a birthmark on our ass? Do we all pour drinks like we hate ourselves? Or is it an _aura?_ Can you just _sense_ it, oh sorcerous one?"

So why didn't the spite burn Cain too? God, the opposite. New life flowered in his pleading tone, a flurry of fresh violets like laughter. "I'm not that much of a bloody fool, Cas. You look just the same, and so do I. Every—"

Casper jerked to his feet. "That's not how fucking reincarnation works!"

He stalked across the room, hands wound through his hair. The ghoul capered in his reflection in the crystal-fronted cabinet, and its face was nothing but dark shadows and black planes.

It wasn't real.

It wasn't real.

The words all tumbled from his mouth in a moaning, groaning mess. "Oh my god this is even _worse._ You don't even see my face when you look at me. I thought you at least saw me, but you _don't._ None of this makes sense. It doesn't make _sense._ "

He wasn't real.

Distorted in the reflection in the cabinet, some rotting twitching figure clambered up from the rug. Its steps were slow, creeping up behind him. Icy spiders clambered all across Casper's back now, clammy heat clutching his neck. He wanted to scream and run but he couldn't move. His vision was a camera centred on his face. Rustling behind him, and the panicked gasps of his breath but he couldn't turn his head. Couldn't move. Couldn't look away from the monster that peered out of his own skin.

Tension ratcheted through his spine as Cain's voice smoothed Casper's sweaty hair back from his face and pulled open his jaw, wider and wider and wider until the bone snapped. The ghoul hunkered over his body forced its hands down his gullet, claws tearing out his lungs. Gore and blood and choking vomit oozed around its grey-flesh.

Cain's soft-spoken words made a susurrus soundtrack to the horrorshow moment.

"Perhaps the little things are different," Cain murmured, and the sweetness was all the sweetness of rot, "but there's some things that are always the same. The very core of you, Cas. You're always so bloody _free._ Every single you I meet, even from the first time we talk, it's so _easy._ I always make you laugh, and you always make me laugh, and we always understand each other better than everyone else in the world. You're always made like the person I was made to fall in love with and I _do._ Every single time."

The monster in the mirror kept shuffling closer. Its limbs shuddered through the air and each hoot slid through the gaps in Cain's words. Step. Hoot. Sweetness. Terror.

Terror.

This time Casper was in the mirror with it and the ghoul grinned and cackled and watched in his place.

"This is happening to us because the universe has been ... manipulated. It's not _because_ of fate, but I believe it's the workings of a power something like fate. I remember who I am the day I turn eighteen and by then, no matter what divergent path my life has taken in whatever new timeline I've shifted into, things always turn out more-or-less the same. At least in the essence that makes us the people we are at the time fate is ... sticking us to."

The face in the camera trembled, muscles tight and straining and its eyes roved wild. What was behind him? What was hidden just out of sight and the bottom of the bed? Just out of sight outside the door? Heavy breaths and heavy footsteps and breath stinking of vodka hot against side of his face as he trembled and pretended to sleep.

"It's the same with you, Cas." Cain brushed a greasy tangle of hair out of his sallow face. Baring skin to the beast. "It's different, but at its core it's the same, as if the whole universe revolves around creating the moments that create _you._ "

_Whatcha doin' sleeping, Cassie? You know you gotta work tonight._

"It's fate, is it?" the ghoul hissed. Voice like shattered glass. "It was always meant to turn out this way."

"I don't like it either, Cas, but I can't deny it any longer. And if there's anything I'm happy for fate to control, it's that there's always, always you."

"Always the same." A sharp, hysterical laugh tore from his throat. The camera pulled back, panning left. Beside the struggling boy, another face panted against his. Foul grin and rugged stubble and his tongue sliding over the ghoul's cheek. "A hundred different mes and we all turn out the same... Is that it then?"

The ghoul turned its dead black pits toward Cain, necrotic drool oozing from between its rotting, needle teeth. The man still panted in his ear. _Bang. Bang. Bang._ Count down to zero.

"If everything's _destined_ , did I always deserve this? Did I always deserve my dad hating me? All that beaten kid self-esteem _crap_ that made me end up with—with _him_."

A surge of nausea went through Casper, that tongue slathering wet against his cheek. He forced the words out a ragged scream that tore at his throat. "Did I fucking deserve getting sold by my own fucking boyfriend every fucking time I got too _fucking_ high to complain? For years, Cain, until I ran away. Do I fucking deserve that?"

Choking, he shoved Cain back, right in his chest. "Is that your _fucking—fate?_ Is that _my_ fucking— _DESTINY_?"

His knees gave. The floor didn't even hurt. Not as much as the raging chaos strangling his mind. It hurt. It hurt. "It _hurts_." He couldn't breathe. Fabric choking in his throat. "I can't _breathe_. I don't—I don't deserve this. I don't _._ I _don't."_

Something lifted him up. Casper shrieked at the touch and slammed his hands against unyielding flesh. "Get _off_! Get off. Get _off._ Let _go!_ "

But Cain didn't. Just the space between his crossed legs, one arm around Casper's waist and the other cradling his head to his chest. After the gut reaction passed, everything just ... died. Everything but the bugs that lived under his skin and the sickness that went so deep it stained his bones.

"Tell me this isn't all there is," Casper whispered to him. "This can't be all there is."

"It's not, love." Long fingers slipped through his hair, scratching against his scalp. Casper felt the way the words choked up in Cain's lungs through his ribs. "God, Cassie, it's not. If everything was the same, things wouldn't be different."

And somehow, that made all the difference. At least in this agony of right now.

"He found me." Cain's arms tightened. A soft _oh_ fell from his lips. "That's what happened that night. He—He found me. Him and one of his friends. I can never get away and this—this feeling—this feeling like I'm just _rotting_ under my skin—it's never going to go away. What else can I do but just _die_?"

"I can kill him, Cas." Tension burned low in his voice now, dark enough to make Casper shudder. "Say the word, my love, and I'll find that creature wherever he's hiding. Nothing tortures quite like sorcery, love, and no one tortures quite like me."

"No." Fuck knew why. _Because you're spineless, Roach Boy. Look at you curled up in the arms of a psycho deluded into loving you. You're nothing but a worm._ "No." It was to get away. It was all to get away. The line had smeared to a sick gradient between reality and his own delusion, perspective flipped and black turned white and white turned sick grey. But what he knew was that he was getting out.

One sliver. Deep, deep in the pits on a website that talked madness but for each snippet of knowledge Casper knew about this sorcery lining up like an ascension. _Lead cuts through sorcery like a knife through butter._

What did it matter if he loved Cain if it got him out?

The ghoul pushed apart Casper's legs and settled its head on Casper's thigh. Its breath stained the air black and foul. Slow, it slid its hand inside its jeans.

"I'm broken," Casper whispered. Blink and the ghoul's clothes were gone. Nothing but that mottled brown-red skin and the scars stark, rotten black against the grey. Casper couldn't take his eyes off it as its hand moved along itself. Up and down and up and down. "How can you look at me and see anything but sickness? You said it's only me, but I'm—I'm not _me_ because of this. It's stained all of me. I'm just some fucked up little junkie whore one wrong day away from falling apart."

Soft laughter huffed against Casper's hair, and Cain's nose rubbed against his scalp as he shook his head. "You think that, do you?"

Casper twisted his head back and scowled up at Cain. Tears streaked Cain's cheeks, bloodshot eyes. But right now, there was just a soft smile on his lips, turned arch by the lift of his eyebrows. "Fuck off."

"I'm just awfully curious how bad your wrong day has to be. I told you before, sweet, you were the bravest person I've ever known, and now..." Cain brushed a lock of hair back from Casper's forehead, his eyebrows softening out and the smile edging to melt. "After all of this, love, you're still here. After all they did to you and after all _I_ did to you, and everything else in your life ... you're still so, so full of life and it's incredible.

Casper pressed his hand to his mouth, choking down the sob. Cain's words were just like the arms that cradled him, gentle and strong and safe wrapped around him, just like his lips pressed against his forehead, a cool salve against the fever sweat in his mind. It was so much sweeter than anyone had _any_ fucking right to talk to him.

"I'm sure I'm different each time as well, Cas. The past lives ... I remember them, but it's very ... hazy. Like remembering something that happened to someone else. The first time and the last are clearest. The beginning changes, and that must change me a little each time as well. This one—" Cain swallowed. His eyes shifting away. "This one was very hard. Because of that, I'm not sure I'd love you quite as much if you weren't exactly the way you are now."

"Wh—Why was it hard?"

Cain shook his head, a flicker of tightness around his lips as he stroked Casper's hair. "I don't want to talk about it, love. And this is about you, not me." He kissed Casper's forehead, lips lingering. His breath still came like tickles of snow behind his warming lips. "I'm so proud of you, Cas. You've been so, so brave. I wish you could see all that, love. I wish you could see all the beautiful bits of yourself that I love so much."

Casper shook his head. His lips trembled and some great horrid mass pressed against his skull. A hulking creature of sludge and ooze and matted vines rising out of the black waters. It stunk so vilely of chaos and debasement that it burnt his eyes.

He didn't deserve it.

"I'm _not._ I—I—I'm just—I'm just _dirty_ and used up and I can't live in this fucking skin. You _can't_ love me. No one can love me. No one's _ever_ loved me. Not even Jack. A—All this _hurt_ and he just _screams_ at me. And I deserve it!"

" _No_. God, no, Cas, you don't—"

"I _do_!" Casper sobbed and tore his fingers back through his shitty, greasy hair. "I'm fucking dirt I'm—"

"Cas—"

 _"_ I'm _dirt!_ I deserve _everything._ "

"Cassie, baby—"

"If there's fucking fate this is all payback for how much of a foul, filthy _roach_ I am. I deserve to die, Cain, and you _don't_ love me. You _can't—"_

Cain grabbed his jaw and kissed him. Salt bloomed on Casper's lips, stinging the torn flesh. He screamed into Cain's mouth. Shoved at his chest, fists and nails, but the _cunt_ wouldn't let go. Fingers bruised his jaw and it was nothing but a crush of lips on lips and the gathering heat in Cain's arm closed on his waist so tight he couldn't move.

A moan tore up Casper's chest. He didn't deserve this. It wasn't real. None of it was _real._

But how could he deny those lips, the passionate insistence against Casper's and the sobs of Cain's gasping breaths. He couldn't. All the fight flooded away, but not to calm. It _sunk._ Hot and intense, and Casper cried out, anguished, against Cain's lips, opening himself to the desperation in the embrace.

Between the hot presses of the kiss, Cain growled to him, and those guttural vows held more raw honesty than Casper thought anyone ever capable of. Cain swore he loved him. He swore Casper was the most beautiful person in the world. The brightest star in the sky. _All_ the stars in the sky, in a night black as the void without the radiant light Casper put in his life.

He swore everything was real and Casper was real and this Casper he loved more than all that had come before and if Casper died, _he_ would die. Forever. For good. Be it an eternity of scratches of light out of the darkness before he snuffed the flame out himself because all that could come after would be naught but ash after this taste of nirvana.

"Don't make me be without you," Cain gasped in his ear, lips searing and sloppy and wet against the sensitive skin. Casper arched into it, moan trapped up in the thickness in his throat. "I can't lose you. They can't take you. Not again, Cassie. Not again. Please not again."

Casper whimpered and clutched him tight. Everything ached. Ached in a way it hadn't in so long and all his muscles wouldn't stop shuddering. Thick phlegm clogged his throat and his nose and so many screamed words struggled on his tongue, but out of their brawl, the small, quick ones slipped. A whimper. A pitiful cry that drowned in déjà vu.

"I'm not special." Cain's breath broke against his throat. "I'm just a roach. How can I be anything special?"

"God, Cas..." Cooler, this kiss. A lingering press with Cain's forehead resting against his temple. Exhausted, but still aching with passion. "If only you could see yourself through my eyes. Can't you tell by the way you make me smile? Even in my very first life, I never realised how much I could feel until I realised that I loved you."

Casper shuddered and squeezed his eyes closed. God, he could see it. That smile. Huge and dopey and aching with love, eyes like he looked upon an angel. Casper sniffed, but nothing moved, nose all stuffed and blocked off. A question stumbled on the tip of his tongue. Probably didn't even want to know the damn answer but all clumsy, it tripped off anyway. "Do—Do I ... Do I look at you like that?"

Whatever expression went with the tightening of Cain's arms and the indrawn breath, it was hidden away against Casper's throat. The words came so low that Casper couldn't even tell the inflection that went with them.

"I ... I think you do, love. Sometimes I think you do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there it is - just why cassie got the way he is and did what he did. I'm wondering if maybe I should allude to all this a little earlier - it's all there in my head but I'm not sure how many of my hints came through. What do you all think?
> 
> And how did you feel about this chapter? Did it have weight for you?


	43. Tastes Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cain carries Casper to bed and saccharine fluffiness ensues. You've been warned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I took a break for Christmas, so here's a double update this week to make up for it! Enjoy!

Salt touched his tongue. Sharp, burning in the cuts that plagued his dry, split lips. Casper started back, hand coming up to his cheek. Those weren't Cain's tears. His fingers pressed higher, tracing slick through the path of wetness, and the spring spilling the river down his cheeks gathered like dew around his eyelashes and trickling forth from his burning eyes.

"Oh."

"Cassie?"

God it was so wonderful hearing Cain call him that. His whole fucking heart turned into a butterfly, some behemoth to lead the horde in his stomach. A blur turned Cain's face to a smear, like looking up at it from underwater. It stung. Casper's lower lip wobbled and Cain's fingers brushed across his cheek, wicking away the tears.

"Oh, my love... I'm sorry. I turned this all to a mess, didn't I?"

Understatement of the fucking millenium. Deserved a really cutting comment, but Casper ... didn't really want to. He just sniffled and smeared the tears across his face.

"Come here—" Cain's arms gathered all around his waist and under his knees. "Come on. Let me take you up to bed, Cassie. Can I?"

Hiccupping, Casper nodded, and with a grunt, Cain got his legs under him and levered them both up from the floor. He staggered a bit gaining his feet, and a wet giggle burst out around Casper's tears. Wasn't that funny. Jack used to do squats with Casper over his shoulders just to make him laugh.

Cain called R2 while he carried Casper through the halls, cradled close against his chest. The tears dried by the time the little construct joined them, nothing left but puffy eyes and a blocked nose. He rubbed and sniffed at it when Cain put him down on top of one of the vase stands in the hall, displacing the vase itself with a flick of his magic.

"Just a moment, love," he said.

And Casper smiled and told him he didn't have to carry him the whole way, and Cain just grinned back even wider and told Casper he didn't want him to walk anywhere when he was sad ever again.

"I'll start lifting weights again," Cain promised him, brushing his fingers back through the side of Casper's hair, and a smile bloomed wet on Casper's lips, the crescent cast of the ray of sun that pushed up through his throat. He hid it behind his sleeve while Cain went and crouched before the construct and murmured to it in a low voice.

He talked to R2 the same way Casper talked to the ghoul. Like it was something real.

Actually, where ... where was his ghoul? Casper's heart lurched in his throat and he almost tumbled off the stand snapping his head around. Where was it? Not now. It hadn't left him—

Hunkered down beside the construct, bobbing side-to-side, all dressed again in a pair of skinnies and Casper's favourite t-shirt. It had its fingers hooked in its mouth while it made noises at the construct. Casper rested his head back against the wall and watched the three of them with a smile.

While Cain talked, R2 kept whirling around in a circle, the sounds from the ghoul distracting it and each time it whirled, the grin on the ghoul's face got wider. Cain was getting huffy with it not paying attention, fingers massaging his temple and pushing into his hair, as his crouch got slouchier and lower to the floor.

Shit, this was the kinda thing that stuck in your mind forever, wasn't it? Coloured cream with nostalgia and this fuzzy warmth in his chest. Tears sprung up in his eyes again just as R2 went zipping off, and him and his wobbling lips were Cain's first glimpse as he turned around, fingers pushed back through his hair. The exasperation vanished in a flash of drawn brows, and he didn't waste a damn second sweeping Casper back up in his arms.

Was this how it really felt to have someone love you?

You could tell whether Cain got up before or with Casper just by the sheets. Cain always left them perfectly made, crisp and tucked and patted down. Yesterday morning, Cain had left early for business and Casper hadn't done more than throw all the pillows into a nest and eventually, crawled out of the twisted sheets and collected his clothes off the floor, so it was amongst these Cain sat him down. Hands on his hips, he looked at them with a smile that took a wry edge.

"You've got to start making these up if you sleep in here, love."

Casper stuck out his lower lip. Well, his lower lip stuck itself out, and that wobble and these big eyes were all real too. The spineless worm wriggling on the bed. Casper lifted his legs up and waggled his feet in front of Cain until, smiling all soft and gentle, Cain caught them on his arm. One hand scratched against Casper's calf as he wormed his fingers under the cuff of Casper's jean to catch his sock. Casper kept telling him to take the jeans off first, but Cain ignored him and fought with the fabric anyway.

All sappy eyes, Cain lifted Casper's foot up to his cheek, probably to kiss it as he pulled off the sock or something adorable like that, but one twitch of his nose had him holding it away, laughing.

"These socks aren't going back into circulation either, love. Bloody hell."

Casper rolled his eyes and fell back into the sheets, toes kneading into Cain's chest. The fading light slanted across Cain with a sigh, bright and yellow and exhausted from the day. It was beautiful. Just like him. "Alright, Mr Muscle."

"Don't give me that."

"But I like these ones." Casper pushed his toes up through Cain's shirt and waved the other foot in his face, until laughing, Cain grabbed it and pulled the other sock off. "They've got bananas on them."

"God, Cas, you're bloody adorable, you know that? Come here"—Cain rested a knee on the side of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath it, and his hands smoothed over the outside of Casper's thighs until they reached the waistband of his jeans— "hips."

Casper popped the button on the jeans and with his feet on Cain's hips, lifted his into the air. Like it always did, something hungry touched Cain's face while he eased the jeans off Casper's wiggling hips. Usually, the expression stayed there just beneath the surface until he had them off and then, as he turned away to fold them up, he'd master it again while Casper smirked to himself, a warm feeling low in his belly.

With the jeans just past the curve of his ass, Cain let Casper's hips fall and leant over him. Cool breath brushed Casper's cheek, and something caught in his chest as Cain grazed his thumb over his cheekbone. Electric. With Cain knelt there between his legs, eyes dancing with the lamplight, Casper's heart quickened. This wasn't how it went. What was he—

"You look so good like this, love..."

Cool lips pressed against his and Casper melted back into the sheets. _Oh._ Alright so they were kissing now. And it was a fucking beautiful kiss. Slow and soft and Cain trembled against the inside of Casper's thighs holding himself apart. A mewl slipped Casper's lips, or something like it at least because he sure as fuck didn't _mewl_ , and he wound his fingers into the soft cotton sheets. The clutch of his heart squeezed up through his throat to settle like a weight behind his eyes.

Cain pulled away abruptly. A moment of his weight against Casper's lips then he was gone, kneeling on the edge of the bed with stars in his eyes and a breathless smile. The whole fucking look, chest rising and falling beneath that loose shirt, pushing the fall of his hair back out of his face, it made Casper's heart flutter just as much as the kiss. 

_Also, I thought I'd share the link banner I currently have on tapas so you can all see the chibi art of Smol Casper I got from the wonderful[Fox](https://tapas.io/foxnflames) ~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? It's just fluff - oops
> 
> (ps. sorry this chapter is so transitionary, the one before and the one after split so bad. I hope the double post this week makes it up to you all!)


	44. Comfort Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dawning feelings are making Casper uncomfortable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been SO badly MIA recently guys. Life stuff has gotten in the way, but I'll bring you all up to date with where we should be ASAP!

At least the rest went normal. Cain threw his clothes in the wash instead of folding them up and then, once Casper was down to his boxers and he'd squirmed up to his nest of pillows, Cain threw the covers over him. Tugged them up right to his chest and sat on the bed beside him as he tucked in the edges. He smiled wider today, and his fingers lingered over Casper's skin. 

Each touch made Casper want to giggle and squirm, but massively fuck that, so he just pulled the covers up over his mouth. Then his nose because apparently this dickhead could tell when he was trying not to laugh by his nose.

Just like Casper could tell by the way his lips pressed thin together and he rolled his eyes so he could look anywhere but at Casper's face.

Had there ever been a line? Or had he stumbled long past it before there'd been a reason to keep an eye beneath his feet?

Cain tucked in the last bit of the covers up around Casper's shoulders so he was completely bundled in them below his eyes, and then he bent in, his eyes bright, and rested his forehead against Casper's. "Don't think I can't tell you're laughing by your eyes as well."

A shock of warmth burst through Casper's chest. He pulled the covers up over his head and wriggled down, pressing his hands to his mouth to stem the _noise_ that pushed up his throat from all this sweet warmth. Cain laughed. Fuck, he had such an amazing laugh. It made everything even fuzzier than it already was and Casper just wanted to _melt._

Far across the room, the door cracked open and Cain's weight shifted off the bed, footsteps tapping off across the floor. The daylight lanced through the gap above the covers Casper opened up, and where he crouched over by the door, it illuminated Cain soft as an angel.

"Thank you, R2, that's brilliant," Cain said, and Casper pressed the bundle of covers to the smile blooming on his lips. R2. Fuck it got him every time. Cain talked to it like a person and it was _adorable._

_You're fucked, Roach. You're totally fucked. What the fuck you gonna do when you leave?_

And what was Cain carrying over here? A coffee? Why only one? Was that...

Oh, it was. A huge mug with a tower of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkled over the top, powder and little curls of it. Soft pink brushed across Cain's cheekbones as he carried it over, a wry twist to his lips, and ever so carefully, he eased himself onto the bed. Fresh and earthy, the aroma of the coffee curled lazy through the air, and behind it, some sweet nutty smell like gingerbread.

Casper poked on of his fingers over the top of the covers at the mug. "Is that for me?"

"No, love, I thought I'd make myself a really nice coffee and drink it in front of you. Of _course_ it's for you, you twat."

"It's got whipped cream on it."

"Yes it does. And steamed milk and I didn't have any syrup, but I did have some ginger nut biscuits which I got R2 to crumble in the cream. I ... I remember you saying you liked it when you were sad."

For him. Hidden behind the covers, Casper's lips trembled. He'd said that _once. Weeks_ ago. While they talked about how they took their coffee and Casper had made an offhand comment about the difference between comfort coffee and slap some life into me coffee. What kind of idiot remembered that?

Why did he have to be so kind all the time?

Fucking tears again. Casper hiccupped and pressed the covers against his burning eyes. They hurt. Crying was fucking shit. It just _hurt._ But for once in his goddamn life nothing else did. Fluttery achy warmth filled up his chest and his stomach and his throat and every inch of him, and it wasn't a bad ache. More like the ache of sex. Good sex. Sex you wanted to have with someone you loved.

It had been like that with Jack once, but never, ever quite like this.

Cain had brought him a stupid coffee with all that stupid whipped cream, and he'd done it to cheer Casper up after he carried him all the way up to bed. Idiot probably had on some huge, stupid smile now and it was the best smile Casper had ever seen. He kept fucking doing all this attention-seeking cutesy stuff now just to make Cain smile like that, and he could watch the way Cain's face lit up for the rest of his life and never, ever get sick of it.

_You done fucked, Roach Boy. Fucking hell, you done fucked. Where'd the line go, worm? You should've watched that fucking line._

"Cassie?" Cain's voice came tight and small. "Did I do something wrong, love?"

Not a smile then, but that face like a painting of a sunset left to run in the rain. Casper pressed his hand to his mouth, choking back the sob.

This wasn't real. This—This _feeling_. It couldn't be real.

What did it matter? Reality and delusion smeared into one entity in this dreamland. Honesty beyond your own comprehension and lies that ran so deep they were indistinguishable from truth. All that mattered was he felt it, real or not. Invented or not. Delusional or not. Here, he felt it and it could only be the truth.

A whimper choked up in Casper's throat and the dying sunlight cut at his eyes. Cain's shoulders sagged, exactly that waterlogged look Casper had imagined, and the coffee sat desultory in his lap.

"Cain?"

Acorn eyes set aglow by the sunset sharpened on him. On Casper's eyes at least, all the rest still buried behind the covers. "Yes, love?"

"C—Can I t—tell you something?"

Softer. Cain tilted his head and without taking his eyes from Casper, he set the coffee on the bedside table. The covers gathered in dark mounds around his crossed legs as if he floated in the night sky. "Anything, love. Anything at all."

"Y—You know how I keep telling you I hate you?"

"Yes, Cas, I think I recall."

Fresh tears spilt over, welling along his eyelashes until a blink sent them trickling down to soak into the cover. Casper sniffed, his breath hitching. "I—I changed my mind. I—I—"

 _Shit._ His tongue wouldn't move. Wouldn't do what he wanted it to. How stupid was that?

But just that seemed to be enough for Cain, and it made Casper's heart swell so big it was definitely about to burst. How could it not be? That smile was so, so beautiful. So warm and sappy and his _eyes._ Casper let out a pitiful cry, pressing the covers in deeper to his face. The edge was really soggy now. It was awful.

"Cas..." Leant in over his folded legs, Cain brushed the back of his fingers against Casper's cheekbone. It tickled, little sparks through his skin and trembling through his heart. Such a tender touch and his eyes glinted wet with tears. "You can't imagine what that means to me, my love. You know I love you, don't you, Cassie?" Cain shifted forward onto his knees and sunk his fingers into Casper's hair. "Tell me you know that, love."

How could he ever doubt it? Cain's every action toward him came utterly suffused with it. Love. Pure, simple, unconditional love.

"Cain?"

"What is it, Cassie?"

"I ... I mean I—I really changed my mind. I think ... I think I've ... you know done that really stupid thing and like..." Casper took a deep, shuddering breath, tugging the covers up over his mouth. He'd look away if he could bear not to look at Cain's stupid face. "Like ... fallen in love with you."

And if the sun had suffused his face before, now it went up like a supernova. A sob burst from his lips, hand catching it a second too late, and the tears sprung from his eyes, little stars melting down his cheeks.

"No..."

Nothing but disbelief, that. The words came so much easier this time, swelling up from Casper's belly to a smile spread across his lips. Casper wriggled deeper under the covers, pulling more of the bundle up to his squinting, stinging eyes. "I love you."

"Oh my god." Muffled behind the hands clutched to his mouth. "God, Cas, you can't..."

Hidden away beneath the covers, Casper prodded Cain's leg with his foot. "I _love_ you."

"You love me?"

Casper nodded, sharp and bright. "I love you."

"You can't."

"Cain?"

"What?"

Casper lowered the covers from his mouth. Anticipation trembled through him, his heart a storm and each tremor pooled heat deep, deep in his groin. _Aching_ with need. "Stop being stupid and come kiss me."

Needless to say Cain did. Needless to say it was like fireworks bursting across the night sky, explosions of cold fire and more colours than you could ever dream. No one had ever kissed him like this before. No kiss could ever compare to the verve and the passion and the desperate, heart-rending joy burning between them in this single moment. It tasted of salt and the relics of mint still fresh on Cain's tongue and that would forever be the taste of happiness stained indelibly on Casper's mind.

Only when Casper's head whirled, when he couldn't fucking breathe and his heart was going to burst, did they break apart. Gasping breaths more like sobs, and tears streaked over Cain's beautiful face, smeared to planes of shining wetness by Casper's clutching hands.

Still, shuddering, Cain pressed his forehead against Casper's and raked his fingers back through his hair. So sublimely close there, arms resting against the pillows either side of Casper's head and one knee between his legs. The stupid tangled covers kept Casper apart from that tall, gorgeous body and the way it'd feel rubbing his feet along those long legs as he ground up into Cain's hip.

"Cain?" 

And he didn't squeak. _You squeaked, you fucking worm. But look at the way it makes him shudder._ Starving eyes, raking over Casper's face like he could devour the lot of him. Casper squirmed and the motion had Cain groaning. Fuck. 

" _Cain,_ I haven't showered in like four—"

Cain cut his words off with a kiss, but the thought nailed his mind up on its cross. _Fuck, Roach, shut up._ Fuck, he must be so gross. Casper twisted his lips free of the kiss. " _Cain,_ I'm—"

" _God_ , Cassie." Cain turned his head, rubbed his nose against Casper's ear and nipped at the lobe. His voice came heavy and rough. _Oozing_ need. "You can't even comprehend how much I don't _care._ "

" _Oh._ " And that was as much a moan as a word as Cain's lips closed on his throat.

"You're so hot, Cassie." Nip of his teeth against the tender skin. "You're so bloody beautiful. Fuck—"

Cain's lips again, warm now. Not quite hot but so gorgeously satiny and wet and firm. Cain gasped as he pressed their brows back together, shudders claiming his whole body.

Tears shone in his eyes. The last dying rays of sun breathed golden brilliance into his marble-carved features, and looking at it, Casper couldn't do shit but squirm and whimper and twist his hands up into Cain's shirt. Casper needed him, like a piece of him had been torn out so long ago and Cain held it cupped in his hands. If Casper had him right now, Cain would press that missing part back into him, and with a kiss that tasted of winter, Casper would be whole.

" _Cain._ "

His eyes raked over Casper. Over his desperate eyes and lips slack around ragged pants and his clinging hands and maybe the way his hips bucked up beneath the covers like he'd never had his dick touched before in his life. A moan broke Cain's lips and his hand slipped around the back of Casper's head, cradling, holding him so he couldn't escape that gaze.

"You really love me, Cassie? Do you?" A choked sob. "It doesn't matter if you don't, love. It doesn't, I promise. You don't have to—"

"Cain—"

"Just don't lie to me, Cassie. Anything but that love. God, _hate_ me, love, just don't make me think—"

" _Cain_ —Cain, look at me. Look at me. Can't you _tell_? From the way I'm looking at you, can't you tell?"

If he couldn't then it was all a lie, and everything fell to pieces.

For a moment, all was still. The shudders stopped, and Casper trapped his squirming hips under the quiet of the moment. Only Cain's short, hitching breaths filled the silence. Trembling, Cain's hand lifted to cup Casper's jaw, face all awe and sweet wonder. Casper could fall into that forever.

"I love you," Casper whispered.

"You do." Cain's hand stroked back through his hair, fresh tears beading on his eyelids and the breath of winter in his face. "You—You really do."

Bubbly warmth rising in his chest, Casper lifted himself up and pecked Cain on the nose. "I do."

A huff of breath and Cain eased himself down beside Casper. The cup of coffee Casper had _totally_ forgotten floated over to them, beckoned on a wave of his hand, and it hung in front of Casper with steam still rising from the edges.

"Drink it, love." A tremor touched Cain's voice though it remained calm. "I just—I'd like a minute. If that's alright."

Casper nodded. It would've been better if Cain took him and ravished him or something, instead of actually giving him a quiet moment to sort through things, but Casper supposed this whole _thing_ meant he respected that. Either way, the coffee did look gorgeous. Cain felt a little stiff under the kiss Casper pressed to his temple, but never mind that as well. The heat still soaked through the china when Casper clasped it in his hands, and the whipped cream, when he bit a mouthful off the top, filled his mouth all chill and fresh.

In the quiet, Cain shifted so his head rested against Casper's chest, eyes thoughtful and distant on the darkening sky outside. Having Cain curled up under his arm was actually unbearably sweet. Casper kinda wanted to hug him properly like some tiny limpet and kiss his head and tell him sappy things the way Cain told Casper sappy things when they cuddled like this or _something_ , but that was stupid so he wouldn't do that.

While they lay there, the last slivers of sun died away and with them, the mind-numbing passion that had been building since the argument down in the study.

Say Casper did love him. Then what? Was it all real? Was it fake, but he didn't care? Did he stay here forever or ... was the act of giving up to this prison a total abandonment of himself as just another lost boy?

Casper rubbed his neck and sipped his coffee. Those weren't nice questions.

What if all that time ago, he'd just gone on that date? No need for this anguish and confusion and delusion, just the inevitability of the sweet fall and the man who treated him like his king.

"Cain?"

"Yes, love?"

The last mouthful of whipped cream melted on his tongue as he scratched his fingers through Cain's hair, the pause long enough that Cain's faraway gaze sharpened back on a few blinks and his eyes turned up to Casper's face.

"I wish I went on that date with you. I'd really, really been looking forward to it, but..." Couldn't quite find the last words to that. _I hated myself so much I couldn't._

Not that he'd ever need that explanation for Cain. His fingers grazed over Casper's jaw, a soft smile on his lips and something bright in his eyes. "Hush, my love. It's all alright."

"Sure. Doesn't mean I don't wish—"

"Why don't we go on that date now, Cassie?" Casper froze with the mug at his lips, coffee pooling on his tongue. "Tomorrow, in fact. I'll do it exactly how I'd planned before and ... maybe we can start again there.

"See, love—" Sighing, Cain sat up and threaded his arm around Casper's shoulders. So warm now. Hot, suffused with the heat of their passion. Without quite meaning to, Casper nestled into his side. "This is it. If—If you do love me, then ... well, I can't do it this way. Not with you trapped. I can never ... you know— God knows it already might just be bloody Stockholm Syndrome, but this—this I can do, love. I can't fix the wards right now – I'd need to redo some of the runes and I don't have the time tonight – but tomorrow, I'm taking you out. No leash this time, just me and you, and ... and I—I really hope you stay with me, Cassie. I really hope you stay."

Casper couldn't move. Couldn't make himself move a damn inch. Head just stopped, but right at the same time, all his thoughts were a train thundering down the tracks at a thousand miles an hour, but it couldn't budge from its path screaming straight off the side of the cliff.

This was it. This was his freedom.

Gentle fingers brushed his hair back from his face and those lips lingered against his temple. Sweet, so sweet, and for freedom, he gave up this.

How did he choose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our Cassie finally took the plunge and admitted his feelings! What do you guys think? What do you think is next for them? I hope this chapter was worth the wait!


	45. Clutching at Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casper reflects on the night with Cain and creeps around the house at night with the Ghoul.

Come the dead of night, sleep lay distant as fiction. Cain slumbered beside him, and as he dreamt, he muttered strange words that Casper had never heard, head twitching as if he sought to escape some pestilent image fixed before his eyes. The longer Casper laid there listening, the shorter his breath came, and when Cain's hold on him eased enough that he could slither unnoticed from his arms, he went on silent feet, all of him bundled away from the chill in the huge fluffy dressing gown Cain had bought for him.

Not that he should have put it on. The soft fibres itched his skin.

The balcony that he and Cain smoked on wasn't too far. Rarely, the sunrise still brushed the eastern horizon pink when Casper got up, and they'd smoke in silence. More often, that balcony was where they'd looked up at the stars while Cain taught him all the constellations and the movement of the heavens, and where they'd drunk whiskey watching the sunset. Once until Casper got pissed enough to get cruel, and more recently, until they were both laughing messes stumbling to bed together in the dark.

Casper leant against the rail, a straight smouldering between his lips from the pack Cain kept by the door. No stars tonight. Was that symbolic? Even when there were no stars to point out, Cain would still stand behind him, elbows on the railings either side of Casper, so easily leaning around him to rest them there. He'd lower his head to murmur in Casper's ear and talk vaster astronomy or sometimes the anatomy of the clouds and the wind and the rain.

Casper still hadn't gotten sick of hearing him talk. A small smile, quickly faded, touched his lips. Good thing Cain never would get sick of hearing himself talk either.

Tonight, the sky hung too dark and heavy to even glimpse the edge of the grounds and the line where the wards held him prisoner, let alone the vast, beautiful landscape beyond. Did Cain mean to let him out there now? Free to wander the wilds as he wished, his king comfortable in the knowledge Casper would always come back.

It bridled. Unquestionably, it rankled him to his bones. That was no freedom. If they fell out, would Cain take him jealously prisoner again? Where was his own control? You didn't earn freedom just 'cause your brain clocked one fucking nutjob as the trigger to pump you full of dopamine. It had to be claimed.

All those years ago, Casper had run away because he chose freedom. He'd chosen control over his own destiny out in the city, and each time Jack had threatened his independence, he'd pulled away.

There was so much wonder out there, beyond the thick hedge borders. Already, his old life had shattered and the only thing dictating his road forward was himself. The beauty in that was breathtaking. Flooring. And ... his mind felt free as well. Casper had never eaten so well or slept so well or went so long without fucking strangers or just gone so many days without thinking of the foul things that had been done to his skin. It was as if the trials had absolved him. Fixed him, at least a little.

What if he went to a small town, somewhere you could live cheap? He could get a job at a diner or something and really work on his coding. There could be a future there, if he earned it, and it wouldn't be a future dictated by some god's whims.

To claim freedom, he had to have earned it. For it to be earned, all of this had to be his own long con. Manipulation like it was supposed to be at the start. And that meant beyond this mire of delusion, none of it was real.

And that meant he had to run away.

Casper cleared his throat and raised his voice to the night. "R2!"

Didn't take too long for the little construct to come to him. Its sorcery glowed in the night, sublime blue of ocean depths and the dusky sky once the sun had long set.

They both treated it like it had a brain in that strange skull, but truth was, it was nothing but manifest will. It obeyed, and it had no capacity to tell Cain anything Casper asked.

It swayed side to side as Casper crouched down beside it, and the ghoul squatted behind its sorcerous light. The glow lit the ghoul's face from below like a kid holding a torch beneath their chin as they told a scary story, and that underglow turned its gaunt features truly ghastly. Fingers hooked in the corners of its lips, long nails protruding in its flesh, the smile split its face in a black slash that gurgled up darkness.

"R2." A spiral of blue sorcery whisked up into the sky, the construct spinning a circle at the sound of its name. "Can you get me some lead?"

The construct swayed back toward the ghoul and a puff of indigo smoke burst above its head. Casper's heart quickened, moisture fleeing his mouth. A cloud in the shape of a skull.

 _It'll do anything you ask,_ Cain had told him, _short of killing itself. It's got a healthy self-preservation instinct._

"It's okay, R2," Casper whispered. "You don't have to touch it. Just show me where some is."

* * *

This time, the construct whizzed off. Casper looked at the ghoul and the ghoul grinned back at him, and they both scampered off down the corridor after it. Through dark halls, all drenched in opulence, along rugs so soft his feet wept that they might never feel the touch again, and beneath crystal chandeliers that glimmered in an unseen light.

A dusty scent pervaded the halls here. An unlived in one, even though this looked to be the grand main quarters of the house. Would he have faked himself into falling in love with Cain if they'd lived here? If it had been gilded bed frames and fabrics worth more than he'd sell himself for in a month?

What if they'd eaten not in that little nook with wisteria cascading outside the window while they laughed at the bees, but instead in the cavernous dining hall R2 led him and the ghoul through? The arched ceilings so tall and a table so grand and long that Casper would feel like a child amongst the splendour, and they'd sit so distant at either end that Cain's gentle croons would be lost to the void around them.

He wouldn't have. But that Cain had the capability to get himself a place like this and then for him to be the sort of person who scorned it all for servant's quarters and guest wings...

No point thinking on it now. It didn't get him anything at all.

The tour of the manor ended at the back of a dusty attic room at the top of a creaking staircase. R2 slipped through a door just as stately as the rest. The light emanating from the construct made it a beacon in the dark as it slipped between the old furniture, all of it dust-sheet spectres and mirrors that made him jump.

That monster in the mirror had kept coming back, even after he made up with Cain. Not his familiar ghoul, but a twisted creature of rotting skin and broken bones protruding from wasted limbs. It hulked in bed while Casper huddled beneath the covers, but its limbs all jerked about like a puppeteer seized at the top of its strings.

It had taken maybe four more times seeing it, and once catching a glimpse in the mirror in Cain's room for Cain to ask him what was wrong. He'd covered up the mirrors at night with a black malaise without Casper even asking. If he'd known any of these antiques were here, he would have blotted them out just in case.

The ghoul found the construct first, down on all fours scampering ahead of Casper like a hunting dog. It prodded at a pipe leant against a wall, and like R2, it recoiled from the touch.

A lead pipe. How cliché.

The air in this attic room lay far colder against his bare skin than elsewhere, and Casper shivered as he shrugged the dressing gown off his shoulders. Grim, the goosebumps raised over his skin, and in this place of shadow-haunted corners and dark mirrors, being so bare felt curiously vulnerable. Better this, though, than Cain catching him out in the dead of night with his kryptonite.

Soon as he saw it, he'd know. No other damn reason for Casper to be swinging a pipe around. The realisation would set into his jaw first, a glimmer of hope remaining elsewhere while his teeth clenched, bone jutting harsh from the sharp, gorgeous line of it. Then it'd crumble, and all that would remain would be the dark, aching depths as the lie strangled him.

Maybe Casper would start crying as Cain backed away from him, hands clutched to his mouth. Sure felt like he would with his eyes all stupid stinging just walking through the halls thinking about Cain's stupid face when Casper hurt him. If he did it right, he wouldn't have to see it.

And if he did, it could fuck off anyway. Casper didn't _cry._ He didn't feel fucking guilty over upsetting nuts who kidnapped him. He didn't feel guilty over _anything._ He survived. That was what he did. Always.

R2 followed him all the way back to his room, even though he'd told the construct it could go. Shifty little fuck. Casper shut the door on it even though R2 just did that sometimes. The pipe went underneath the edge of Casper's mattress and once it was stashed, he went back out to the hall.

All dark. Not even the moon lit the stairs, and the construct had vanished, taking its torch-like glow with it. The stairs croaked as he edged down them, feeling for the next surface on these rickety old things with his toes. Listening to these creaks and moans beneath his feet, the quiet here struck him again. No cars. No voices. No insidious drone of humanity. Some kind of bird nested in the eaves above one of these windows and their sleepy coos were vivid in the silence.

This was where he'd go when he ran away. Out in the country in some dead-end backwater town where no one had any use for rent boys anyway so he wouldn't have a choice but to put that right behind him and find a different way to live. And wherever it was, it'd be _quiet._ Maybe at night, he'd wander out to the wide-open corn fields to smoke a joint and chew some grass or something. Or maybe it'd be a town nestled in amongst forests and he could trek in that other world for hours without encountering another soul.

At the bottom of the stairs, another set of footsteps echoed through the house. Distant still. Only audible because of this quiet, and Casper froze at the bottom of the stairs.

Who was that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wouldn't it be nice if I'd just ended it with them saying I love you? *Alas*...


End file.
